Jane Kim declared victory in San Francisco on Friday in the race to be California’s new state insurance commissioner.
Kim, a Democrat and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, had 52.7% of the votes as of Friday morning, compared to state Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat representing parts of Los Angeles County who had 47.3% of the vote, a deficit of more than 400,000 votes, according to the latest election results posted on the California Secretary of State’s website.
After leaving the Board of Supervisors in 2019, Kim served as California political director for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and served as state director of the Working Families Party, a progressive political party, for the past four years.
Her campaign said Kim will be the first woman to serve as California’s insurance commissioner.
Allen, whose state Senate district in the Santa Monica Mountains was ravaged in wildfires in January 2025, called to concede the race Friday morning, Kim confirmed during her victory speech in San Francisco.
“Thank you to everyone who believed in this campaign to make an under-the-radar, underleveraged office into a champion and watchdog for the people of California.”
Jane Kim, California insurance commissioner-elect
Kim said her team “is already working to transition and to work on the wins that we want to make happen for the people of California.”
She has proposed a single-payer disaster insurance policy and is calling for accountability and transparency in how insurance companies are spending the money from people’s premiums.
Allen had criticized the proposal for what his campaign site called an “untested, government-run system” and said “independent analysts and newspapers across California warn that kind of plan could bankrupt the state and send costs even higher.”
Kim said she won despite being outspent and her opponent’s campaign being backed by insurance industry allies.
“Thank you to everyone who believed in this campaign to make an under-the-radar, underleveraged office into a champion and watchdog for the people of California. I’m humbled and honored to dive into the challenges and opportunities of what comes next,” she said. “For too long, this office has worked for the insurance companies. Now, it works for the people.”
