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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Jane Kim has released a six-figure ad titled “The Commissionah,” featuring an endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders, in response to utility corporations PG&E, Edison and Sempra funding nearly $1 million in attack ads, while Chris Larsen has spent $1 million supporting Kim’s opponent, Ben Allen.
Fight Agency, the producers behind “The Commissionah,” is also the team behind Zohran Mamdani. The ads are known for being groundbreaking and hard-hitting Democratic campaign ads, with Fight Agency’s website motto consisting simply of “FIGHT.”
A utility-funded super PAC is attacking Kim, according to the press release. The utility super PAC is falsely attempting to “label the only woman Democrat and the only progressive in the California Insurance Commissioner race as ‘unqualified,’” the press release states.
The attacks come, according to the press release, “despite her long career in public service as a civil rights lawyer, San Francisco supervisor, and consumer advocate.”
The press release reports that Kim has a “long list of endorsers — including Sanders, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, State Controller Malia Cohen, SEIU California, CNA, CTA, and CFT.”
In “The Commissionah,” Sanders states, “We need candidates who are going to take on the political establishment, the economic establishment, fight for Medicare for All, and that’s what Jane Kim is gonna do.”
The press release also quotes Kim, who argued, “The utility companies who burned down our state say I’m unqualified, because they know I’ll fight for consumers. … I will never kowtow to corporations and billionaires, no matter how much they spend against me. It’s time for an Insurance Commissioner who will fight for the many, not the few.”
The fires referenced in the ad were linked to PG&E, which PBS reported was responsible for a “devastating fire in 2018” and owed $13.5 billion in compensation “to people who lost their homes and businesses in fires over the last several years.”
PBS also quoted California Public Utilities Commissioner Mark Ferron, who said: “On a scale from one to 10, where 10 is really obstructive and zero is completely cooperative, I would have put PG&E at a nine.”
Kim has been targeted by utility company-funded ads, which the press release states “conveniently leave [the fires] out of their ads.” The release also notes that “Kim is the only candidate in the race who has refused contributions from utility companies.”
The press release closes by arguing that “Kim’s bold policy platform to guarantee Disaster Insurance for All and single-payer auto insurance has the billionaires and monopoly corporations rattled.”
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Insurers still aren’t writing policies in high risk areas after all this time, and some of them aren’t writing policies in California at all. They have an incentive to not do so, since they’re the ones who actually operate the Fair Plan itself.
The voters of this state also made a mistake when they provided too much authority to the commissioner to regulate rates decades ago.
And since utility (base) rates are required to be the same throughout a utility’s service area (regardless of cost), this also results in “everyone else” paying to serve some yahoo on the outer edges of some place like Paradise the same rate as someone who lives in low-risk, lower-cost per capita urban areas.
Of course, if they charged the yahoo an exorbitant rate, he/she would probably burn the forest down with their own solar system, instead. In which case, the yahoo wouldn’t have the resources or insurance to address the damage he/she caused.
Ultimately, I don’t blame the match as much as the tinderbox.
And I don’t believe that climate change is the main cause. People moving to known high-risk fire zones is the cause. And since those forests/lands are no longer allowed to burn, the combustible load keeps increasing beyond what nature “allowed”.
The Indians (Native Americans) didn’t have as much trouble with fires, floods, or earthquakes. They also didn’t have traffic jams, parking problems, or sprawl. (At least, not until they became like the rest of society.)