Hard times, hard market. That describes California’s insurance crisis in a nutshell. The state’s current insurance commissioner inspires little confidence and is termed out. Can a wealthy underdog from San Francisco get elected to the job? Patrick Wolff is going to find out.
Wildfires triggered by climate change, inflation, and related effects such as increased reinsurance and construction costs, as well as ever-larger insurance claims, have prompted major providers like AIG, Chubb, and The Hartford to either cease issuing new policies or withdraw from the state entirely. The number of residents using the California FAIR plan, a state program that helps provide basic fire coverage for high-risk properties, has doubled in the last two years.
Meanwhile, the job of insurance commissioner in California is an elected position, a low-glamour job often occupied by termed-out officeholders as a stepping stone in their political careers. Ricardo Lara, the incumbent, stepped into a scandal almost immediately after taking office by accepting over $270,000 from industry contributors, despite having pledged not to do so.
“I spent a long time studying this race before deciding to get in. There’s a widespread awareness that we’re in a crisis, and I think that’s what makes this different.” — Patrick Wolff
A former Los Angeles legislator, Lara also expensed his Sacramento pied-a-terre on the public dime. Termed out and true to form, he implies he’s running for lieutenant governor. Still, he hasn’t done any meaningful campaigning for the job, despite using a campaign account to expense lavish dinners. Most important, his attendance at an insurance conference in Bermuda last March, immediately following the unpopular rate hike granted to provider State Farm, solidified his image as captured by the industry.
Meanwhile, the job is up for grabs in November 2026 and already features some recognized names, such as Democratic state Senator Ben Allen and former Senator Peter Bradford. On the Republican side so far is Stacy Korsgarden, a financial advisor from San Luis Obispo.
Enter Patrick Wolff, whose main claim to fame, to San Francisco political observers, is as an activist in the city’s school system, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, and a fundraiser for recent successful efforts to recall the city’s board of education members. He’s also the treasurer of the Westside Family Democratic Club, part of the fractious “moderate majority” in the city’s establishment politics.
In the civilian world, he manages an investment fund, having worked in the financial industry, including with major players such as Peter Thiel. (Wolff, a Democrat, notes that his relationship with Thiel ended in 2017 after Donald Trump was elected president.) Before that, he spent the 1990s as a professional chess player, achieving grandmaster status, winning two United States championships, and writing books on the game.
But is that enough for a winning campaign in politics, particularly state politics, particularly for a job that garners no public attention except when really bad news happens?
“I think the fundamental problem is we have been electing the wrong kind of person into this office,” Wolff told The Voice in an interview. “In most states, this job is appointed … because of the dynamic in California, where we have term limits, you have this conveyor belt of politicians looking for some place to go … no insurance experience or financial expertise, but somebody who has the backing of inside politicians. I would put Ricardo Lara in this category. Bradford was running for lieutenant governor until a couple of months ago … and Allen, told Politico that he was ‘walking into this with a certain degree of trepidation.’ I have this radical idea that the person who is insurance commissioner should actually have the qualifications and the motivation to be insurance commissioner.”
That also means that Wolff has some concrete ideas as part of his platform. These include grading insurance providers based on consumer feedback, shortening the approval cost for standard rate applications, and an annual rates benchmarking report. These may seem mundane, but Wolff says they can be significant steps in making California’s insurance market fairer and transparent.
“You know, there’s this famous phrase, ‘trust, but verify.’ We can’t trust the market alone. We also have to verify it,” says Wolff.
But is that enough to get Wolff noticed? He’s hired veteran political consultant Rich Schlackman, and the veteran FM3 polling firm has conducted an initial survey showing a large plurality of voters as undecided, with a hypothetical Republican businessman in second place. Could an actual Democrat businessman beat the usual political name recognition game this time around?
Leading strategist Garry South has his doubts.
“The last time a candidate who was not already in office won the job was Steve Poizner in ’06 — a multimillionaire, and in the same year, Schwarzenegger won reelection,” South told The Voice in a phone interview. “It is tough for a nonincumbent candidate to gain traction when running for statewide office in a state with more registered voters than people living in 47 of the other 49 states.”
Local veteran consultant David Latterman agrees.
“Even though you’d want a technical expert to have this role (same as treasurer, controller, etc), it always boils down to some political race. Top Dem takes on Top GOP: endorsements, labor, all the usual players. We’ll just get another strictly political person who uses the job as a springboard. It’s the nature of things.”
All that said, Wolff sees the current crisis as making the race wide open enough for an opportunity.
“I spent a long time studying this race before deciding to get in. In a regular cycle, it wouldn’t be possible for someone like me to win this race because this race just wouldn’t get the kind of attention. However, there is now a widespread awareness that we’re in a crisis, and I think that’s what makes this different.”