“The sexiest race on the ballot”

Hello everyone, and welcome back to State of Emergency. I’m Jesse Nichols, a video producer and reporter at Grist, and today we’re going to be talking about how worsening climate impacts are raising the profile of a largely overlooked section on state ballots: The race for insurance commissioner.

If you watched the presidential debate earlier this month, you might have been surprised by VP Kamala Harris’ response when asked about climate change. Instead of focusing on the dangers of drought or rising sea levels, her answer focused on home insurance. “It is very real,” Harris said. “You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up.”

Since 2020, the increasing number and severity of natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes have cast home insurance markets into turmoil, leading to an explosive rise in premiums. And this election season, insurance commissioners — the state officials in charge of regulating the industry and approving rate increases — are suddenly in the hot seat.

I live in Washington — one of the 11 states that elect insurance commissioners — and like many voters, I hadn’t thought much about this obscure position at the bottom of the ballot. And according to Dave Jones, a former California insurance commissioner, I wasn’t alone. “It’s just not something [voters] pay attention to until things go wrong,” Jones said. “Right now, things are going wrong.”

In recent years, climate disasters have pushed many insurance companies into the red, driving a 33-percent spike in the average home premium nationwide.

Unaffordable premiums now represent one of the most tangible ways that climate change is affecting everyday Americans. This election season, frustrated voters in some states are starting to pay attention to once-obscure insurance commissioner races.

“It’s the sexiest race on the ballot,” said Natasha Marcus, a North Carolina democratic candidate for insurance commissioner. “As soon as people realize how directly it impacts their wallets, they take an interest.” Marcus, a state senator, is challenging incumbent commissioner Mike Causey after a controversial rate-hike proposal earlier this year. In January, the insurance industry requested a 42 percent increase in home insurance rates. In certain coastal neighborhoods, it asked for a rate increase of 99 percent. The proposal was met with fury: Causey’s office received more than 24,000 emails, and a public comment session held earlier this year was filled with roughly seven hours of angry testimony. Causey eventually rejected the initial proposal, calling the rate increases “excessive and unfairly discriminatory,” but has yet to settle on new insurance rates.

Marcus, who is currently neck-and-neck with Causey in a recent poll, worries that insurance companies are using extreme weather as a pretext to ask for unreasonably high rates, pointing to a New York Times investigation that shows the state’s insurers have made profits 10 of the past 11 years. For this reason, her campaign is largely centered around bringing more transparency to the rate-setting process.

Candidates around the country are also advocating for more adaptation and resilience measures. In North Carolina, Marcus wants to expand a state program that offers grants to stormproof roofs. And candidates in Washington and Montana would like to see insurance incentives offered to homeowners who implement fire resilience measures to their homes.

There is a lot more to this story — more than we could fit in your inbox. To read the full reported story on how the insurance crisis is reshaping elections, click here.

What we’re reading

Does extreme weather wake voters up: A rash of floods and wildfires over the past decade has increased public awareness of global warming, and more voters now cite extreme weather as a top reason for acting on climate change. My Grist colleague Syris Valentine has a story breaking down this shift in detail.
Read more

How much does a hurricane cost: Hurricanes cause billions of dollars in damages, but their effects extend far beyond what insurers and government agencies can count. Grist reporters Matt Simon and Ayurella Horn-Muller have a story on how storms send a “ripple effect” through the economy.
Read more

Helene approaches: A tropical system in the Caribbean is expected to become Hurricane Helene later this week and deliver significant impacts to the Gulf Coast of Florida. The region has already seen several hurricane landfalls in the past few years, including from Category 1 Debby just a few months ago.
Read more

Harris gets some star power: Vice President Kamala Harris got help from two big celebrities last week as she makes her climate case to voters — actress Jane Fonda urged disaffected young people not to sit the election out, and science icon Bill Nye stumped for Harris during a talk at Duke in the swing state of North Carolina.
Read more

Czechs vote after flooding: Voters in the Czech Republic cast ballots in a legislative election last week in the aftermath of a massive flood event. The flood killed at least 24 people and destroyed polling infrastructure in dozens of small towns, forcing officials to open up makeshift voting sites.
Read more

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