Californias put a hardcore socialist in charge of its broken insurance market. Now homeowners face a dangerous experiment

California voters decided to put a socialist in charge of the state’s insurance industry — not even two years after fires tore through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena.California homeowners are still opening non-renewal letters.Premiums keep climbing.

Companies that once competed for business here have pulled back.Apparently, voters decided the answer was to put a radical in charge.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story Jane Kim, the former San Francisco supervisor who served as Bernie Sanders’ California political director in 2020, has declared victory in the race for insurance commissioner.Her opponent, Democratic State Senator Ben Allen, who actually represents Pacific Palisades, called to congratulate her, although the count isn’t final.After working for Sanders, Kim went on to run the California Working Families Party, and the Democratic Socialists of America recommended her for this job.

Even the California Democratic Party wouldn’t go there.It endorsed Allen.

Voters went further left anyway.The DSA’s objective is to replace capitalism.The organization’s platform calls for democratic control over private resources such as insurance and credit.

Now a candidate it backed will regulate every private insurer in California.The San Francisco Chronicle said that Kim would be a “disaster.” She won anyway.In declaring victory, Kim said that “insurance was created as a shared promise.” Most of us think of insurance as a contract.You pay a premium, a company takes on your risk, and it pays your claim.

For a democratic socialist, the trouble is that a private company is making that promise at all.Kim spent the campaign complaining that insurers’ “blockbuster profits enrich shareholders and CEOs, not customers.” Her single-payer disaster p...