The California state flag. Credit: Konstantin Yolshin/Adobe Stock
Two Democrats are leading in the California primary for the state's insurance commissioner post.
California held its primaries for statewide offices Tuesday. The state lets the two candidates who get the most votes compete in the general election in November, without concern for the top two candidates' political party affiliation.
Preliminary results show that Jane Kim, an attorney who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2011 through 2019, ranked first at press time, with 1.1 million of the votes counted, or 23.7% of the total.
Ben Allen, the second-place finisher, is an attorney who serves in the state Senate. He had 894,232 votes, or 19.2% of the total.
Both Kim and Allen are Democrats. Kim is also a member of the Working Families Party.
The third-place finisher, Stacy Korsgaden, is a Republican who has worked as a property and casualty insurance broker in California since 1988. She received 816,488 votes, or 17.5% of the total.
No other candidate received more than 10% of the vote.
Neither Kim nor Allen has significant professional experience in insurance, and neither says much about health insurance, or anything about life insurance or annuities, on their websites.
What it means: The state that would have the fourth-highest gross domestic product total in the world if it were a separate country may soon have a top insurance regulator without much experience with life insurance, health insurance or annuities.
Jane Kim: Kim has listed no significant professional experience in insurance on her campaign website.
Most of the priorities listed on her campaign website involve property and casualty insurance.
One of her ideas is to create a "Medicare for all" program for children.
She has a bachelor's degree from Stanford and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ben Allen: Allen has focused mainly on P&C issues in the state Senate and in discussions about his priorities on his campaign website.
He has introduced Senate Bill 1244: Insurance Broker Exorbitant Commissions.
The bill would require "insurance brokers, agents, consultants, advisors, and related intermediaries who advise public agencies on employees' health care benefits to disclose all compensation from insurance providers, direct and indirect, before entering, extending, or renewing a services contract with the public agency," according to the summary on his website.
Allen has a bachelor's degree from Harvard, a master's degree from Cambridge and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Credit: Konstantin Yolshin/Adobe Stock
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