Joni passed away at home April 12, 2026. She was born on June 28, 1952, in DeWitt, Iowa. She was the seventh child in what would be a total of eight children born to Harold and Mary Hahn.

The family moved around between Iowa, Washington and California, eventually settling in Eureka. Joni met and married David Hubbard in 1970. Joni had her son Bryan in 1971 and Jason in 1974. You could often find her bragging about her boys, sharing how proud she was of both of them.

She began her cosmetology career soon after Bryan was born. She opened her own salon, Harrison Styling, then she worked at Shear Designs, and finally retiring to her home salon where she could garden between clients. She loved sharing stories with all her clients, who inevitably became friends — while making them look and feel beautiful.

In 2008 Joni married George Bladow. George was her person; he loved and cherished her. Together Joni and George loved fishing, traveling, and enjoying the great outdoors. You could often find them enjoying their backyard, growing a variety of flowers, fruits, and veggies. She loved to entertain and cook for everyone. On any day you would find her doing a client’s hair, working in her backyard, reading or visiting with friends and family. Joni and George made their backyard and deck a tranquil place to gather, relax, and socialize. If you’ve been there, you know.

Joni is survived by her husband George, her son Bryan, and four of her siblings (Norma Pagel, Janice Worden, David Hahn and Lee Ann Walstrom). She leaves behind many nieces and nephews, whom she loved very much. She also leaves behind many special friends, all who became a huge part of her life: Katrina, Willa, Thea, Rosie, Emily, Diane, Debbie, Brent and Jessica are just a few of her closest friends that held their own special spot in her heart. She had many more people that meant so much to her she considered them family, we are sorry we can’t name them all. If you knew Joni, you knew she loved with all of her heart. She would bend over backwards to help the ones she loved. 

Joni was loved and is going to be greatly missed. Per her request, there will not be a ceremony. We ask that you keep her family in your prayers and enjoy a cocktail in her name. If you have a memory of Joni that you would like to share, please add to the comments. We would love to hear your stories of Joni.

The Humboldt County District Attorney’s office today announced an offer to Jake Combs, who is being retried for murder after an appeals court overturned his 2023 conviction.

During pretrial arrangements, prosecutor Whitney Timm announced that in exchange for dropping a 2025 drug charge, the office would agree to a deal.

Under this proposed offer, 34-year-old Combs would plead guilty to first degree murder, alongside a weapons enhancement, for a sentence of 50 years to life.

This is quite similar to his since-overturned sentence.

Combs was sentenced in 2023 to 50 years to life in prison for first degree murder for killing 25-year-old Trevor John Earley of Alderpoint. He was also convicted of the weapons enhancement.

Combs in 2022. File photo.

This conviction was overturned in 2025, when an appeals court found the court erred in admitting certain evidence about Combs allegedly attacking an inmate showed to jurors during the trial.

Since then, Combs was accused of possessing six grams of methamphetamine in jail in August 2025, shortly after being transferred from Calipatria State Prison to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for retrial, according to court records.

Under the deal, this drug charge would be dropped.

Timm pointed to Comb’s testifying on his remorse before offering this deal on the record. According to reporting from the Times-Standard, before being sentenced in 2023 he apologized to the victim’s family, though they had left the courtroom en masse before he spoke.

Combs deliberated with his attorneys, co-counsels Ryan McClurg and Emery Welton from the Public Defender’s office, after the Timm announced the deal on the record.

But the court continued forward with preparations for a jury trial Monday afternoon. Attorneys debated including — or excluding — particular pieces of evidence in the trial.

They hashed out whether comments on feelings towards animals should be excluded, if it was fair game to include a statement he made to other inmates that he “domed some n____r and they’re trying to give me 50 to life,” whether evidence from an alleged assault one year ago on an inmate could be included (to be used when jurors are evaluating the verity of Comb’s statements, as he’s expected to take to the stand again), etc. One medical professional who testified is no longer fit to serve as a witness.

Welton pointed out, while debating whether to include Combs’ early statements to law enforcement, the defendant had previously confessed on the stand. The trial aims to hone in on the man’s intent and premeditation.

Judge Kaleb Cockrum noted the case was serious, while going over housekeeping details.

Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday. Attorneys estimated the trial will take three weeks.

PREVIOUSLY:

• 29-Year-Old Arrested in Connection With Alderpoint Homicide This Morning
• Friends and Family of Alderpoint Murder Victim Pack Courtroom as Suspect is Arraigned
• TODAY in COURT: Two Local Murder Cases Moving Forward
• TODAY in COURT: Man Convicted of Rio Dell Murder May Finally be Sentenced Next Month; Alderpoint Murder Suspect Scheduled for Preliminary Hearing
• Alderpoint Murder Suspect Told Cops He Shot Man in the Head to Save His Puppy, Investigator Testifies
• Alderpoint Man Convicted of Murder in 2022 Shooting Prompted by Dog Dispute
• Overturned Murder Conviction Retrial Approaches; Jake Combs Jury Trial Set for April

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is alerting Humboldt County residents and businesses that a significant number of counterfeit $100 bills have been seized by our deputies over the past several weeks. Residents and local businesses are encouraged to familiarize themselves with key security features to help identify fake currency by using the Look, Feel, and Tilt method.

• Feel the paper: Genuine U.S. currency is printed on a special cotton-linen blend that feels slightly rough and textured, not smooth or waxy like regular paper. 
• Color-shifting ink: Tilt the bill and look at the number “100” in the lower right corner. On a real bill, it will shift from copper to green. 
• 3D security ribbon: A blue ribbon is woven into the paper (not printed on top). When you tilt the bill, the bells and “100s” on the ribbon should move. 
• Watermark: Hold the bill up to the light to see a faint image of Benjamin Franklin on the right side. This watermark should be visible from both sides. 
• Security thread: A vertical security strip embedded in the bill should be visible when held to the light and will glow pink under UV light. 
• Microprinting: Look closely for very small text (such as “USA 100”) around Franklin’s portrait and other areas. Counterfeit bills often lack this detail or appear blurry. 
• Raised printing: Real bills have slightly raised ink, especially on Franklin’s portrait and the lettering. 

If you believe you have received a counterfeit bill, contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and provide as much information as possible about whom, where and how you received it.

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

Last summer, a group of young kayakers set out on a historic trip down the Klamath River, from its headwaters in southern Oregon to its mouth south of Crescent City. It was a trip that would have been impossible even a scant year before, when hydroelectric dams were still diverting miles of water and leaving large chunks of the waterway high and dry. The old river bed was, in some spots, crowded with trees that sprouted at the bottom of river cliffsides; before the dams were removed, they had to be ripped down and helicoptered out so the river could once again course through its tracks. 

The trip marked a “first time in a long time” occasion for the kayakers as well: it was the first time people had traversed the entire length of the Klamath in over a century. The core group was composed of several dozen Indigenous teenagers from tribes across southern Oregon and northern California, some of them were from the Hoopa Valley here in Humboldt, a landscape dominated by the marriage of the Trinity and Klamath rivers. The excitement created by the expedition has raised interest in water sports in the region, but, until recently, it was bereft of any organization with a singular focus on fostering the area’s swimming talent. 

The valley’s getting its own swim team, the first USA Swimming-sponsored team on Native land, according to coach Kelly Nathane and the team’s board president Mary Ruffcorn-Barragan. Laying the groundwork to construct a team has been a years-long project, Nathane and Ruffcorn-Barragan told the Outpost earlier this week. When she and Ruffcorn-Barragan talk about the confluence of positive effects they’re hopeful it’ll carry to Hoopa, they make it sound almost preposterous that there isn’t one already. 

“I want them to know that they can be leaders in their community,” Nathane said. “Because we are a water-based community. Everything revolves around the rivers.”

Hoopa has had a pool for years, constructed at the Neighborhood Facility next to the tribal headquarters sometime in the mid-’70s with funds donated by community members. It’s outdoors, 25 yards long, with a view of the hills and forests. There are remnants of old competitive infrastructure: a black stripe runs the length of the pool, old hooks for lane dividers jut from the wall, and there are indentations from diving blocks long since removed. It closes during the winter. 

Getting it ready for heavy, consistent use has taken a lot of work. Pumps had to be cleared, filters fixed, the water cleaned. Nathane had to learn more about pool chemicals than she’d ever wanted to. (“I’m not a chemist.”) Communities often end up benefiting from new swim teams rehabbing old pools, Ruffcorn-Barragan said; they have the drive to clean it up, and then everyone starts swimming there. It was often green before the revamp, Nathane said, but that didn’t stop everyone. One guy, an older regular named Kenny, swims in it no matter the condition of the water or the temperature; he bragged to Nathane that his heart was in “tip-top” shape.

“It’s been around a very long time,” Nathane said. “It has been through a lot of phases. I hear from all the elders, you know, ‘We used to come here, and we jumped off the diving board, and we would have so much fun.’ This pool has been through a lot of phases: lot of love, not a lot of care, lot of love, not a lot of care. It’s just been up and down and up and down.”

Nathane — well-tattooed, 46 years old, a champion gesticulator and Red Bull-swiller clad in camo pants and Chelsea boots — has been a swim coach for decades. She was with the Humboldt Swim Club for 20 years, and began coaching swim lessons in Willow Creek in 2016. She moved to Salyer in 2024 after her children graduated from Arcata High School. Living there comes with its own set of challenges — on her way to our interview, a random construction stop on the highway delayed her a tad — but she loves it. 

When she began coaching lessons in Willow Creek in 2016, she was struck by how many of her students were poor swimmers, scared of the water despite being surrounded by it. Their parents are scared of the water too. One of her student’s parents refused to teach her kid how to swim, or even to go in the water. The kid learned, Nathane said, and lost his fear. 

“We are not in the middle of Kansas, where there’s no water,” Nathane said. “We are on so much water. It’s insane. It’s so important. If we’re at the river, we’re just like, ‘Oh God. Oh my God. Oh my God.’ I just want these kids to be safe.”

Willow Creek doesn’t have its own community pool. Nathane teaches her lessons in a resident’s backyard pool, an L-shaped in-ground pool with just enough room for a dozen kids. When she learned Hoopa had its own full-size pool, it seemed nonsensical that it wasn’t being used, and she also started teaching lessons in Hoopa in 2018. (For a time, she was coaching there, in Willow Creek, and in Arcata. Summers are busy.)

Hoopa residents have asked Nathane to start a swim team since 2020 or so, she said, and the idea intrigued her. The pandemic delayed her efforts for a few years, but she and Ruffcorn-Barragan have spent the last year or so figuring out the organization’s structure and how to make joining the team affordable. 

Swimming is an expensive sport. It’s an “inaccessible” one to a lot of communities, Ruffcorn-Barragan said. The cost of travel, equipment, club fees, coaching — it adds up. Humboldt Swim Club charges their swimmers up to $205 every month, plus another $550 every year for miscellaneous fees. (There are discounts for families and scholarships for the financially challenged.) Many tribal members don’t have that kind of money. Detailed data on the average income on the reservation and in the valley is sketchy, but somewhere around 20% of all the area’s residents live under the poverty line. The cost to join the team will be based on a sliding scale based on income, but because of the area’s impoverishment, the team’s leadership managed to reduce their insurance premiums down to $5 per member annually from more than $80. They’ve managed to snag grants from Pacific Swimming and for diabetes prevention through the K’ima:w Medical Center in Hoopa, which paid for a pace clock, equipment, and gear. They’re working on figuring out transportation for swimmers who live far from the pool. They reached out to other teams, who kicked some old gear in too. The Palo Alto Swim Team gave them swim goggles, suits, parkas, and fins. 

The club’s logo. Artwork by Sorren Richards.

Membership will be open to all swimmers ages 6-18 who live in the area, including communities up and down Highway 299 and 96. They just need to be able to swim face-down. If that’s beyond a prospective member’s abilities, there will likely also be an informal group for complete beginners. Tryouts are May 1 and 2; practice begins later in the month.

The team is a member of Pacific Swimming, USA Swimming’s administrative subdivision that includes counties up and down Northern California and into Nevada. Pacific Swim has more than 100 member teams and more than 13,000 swimmers spread across them; the subdivision of the subdivision the Hoopa team belongs to goes from Del Norte County to San Francisco. The organization is an alternative to high school-affiliated teams and club teams with their own leagues. Nathane and Ruffcorn-Barragan envision the Hoopa team competing with teams across the division, practicing two to four times a week, split into groups based on each swimmer’s skills. But — for a while, at least — the group’s main focus will not be on producing champion racers.

Learning how to swim well opens doors and deepens knowledge of oneself, Nathane and Ruffcorn-Barragan said. Ruffcorn-Barragan likened it to understanding your own “buoyancy.” Solid swimmers are safe in the water; Nathane said she never worried about her kids playing around in the rivers when they were young. Solid swimmers can earn money lifeguarding, or passing their skills along to others as a coach. Creating a swim team is, in some ways, akin to an economic development program. 

“They always have a job,” Lawre Maple told the Outpost. Maple is the aquatics director at Cal Poly Humboldt; her own daughter is a scuba instructor in Monterey. 

“We want these kids to be able to have jobs,” Nathane said.

“And life skills!” Maple replied. “If they want to get out of Hoopa, come back with a better education, [they’ll have a job].”

Giving their students job skills is important, they said, but gaining a love for the water, losing that fear like that student did, is imperative. You can learn to swim in a river (the traditional way), but it’s far more dangerous. 

“The connection to water is so important,” Nathane said. “You don’t want these kids to lose the connection to the water. And if you have fear of water, you lose your connection to it, you know? I mean, yes, be cautious of water, but understand it. And a pool is a great space to be able to understand water, you know, it’s controlled — it’s controlled water.”

The social benefits are significant, they say. Though swimming is an individual sport, they’ll still train with a team, make friends with one another and learn how to get along despite any differences. Swimming is also a sport that shows off a lot of skin. Racers compete in next to nothing; it becomes a point of pride. Nathane said one of her protegees, an “incredibly” fast teenager who helps her out with her lessons, wears a hot pink Speedo to practice. The younger kids don’t understand why he’s in “his underwear,” she said, but they eventually stop noticing. The human body stops being something strange. People become comfortable with themselves and others, they said, and the training breeds confidence.

“You’re in a bathing suit around your peers from the age of six through high school, and maybe even in college,” Ruffcorn-Barragan said. “Still, as an adult, I feel more comfortable in my bathing suit, sitting in this room, than I do in my clothes…that confidence in your body transfers to confidence in the water, and confidence in, like, everything else in your life.”

To Ruffcorn-Barragan and Nathane, swimming is a type of freedom. A swim rids them of stress, centers them again; they hope sharing that feeling with the swimmers on the team will help them in every aspect of their life.

“If you’ve got your head down, underwater, putting in the work while you’re swimming — it’s the best,” Ruffcorn-Barragan said. “Similar to a runner’s high.”

Nathane replied. “I always tell this to kids,” she said. “‘If you learn to swim and you go underwater, guess what? Nobody can really tell you what to do under there, because you can’t hear ‘em.’ I can just go underwater, and no one can really bother me under there. It’s just you. It’s just you under there.”

Correction: a previous version of this article misidentified the location of the mouth of the Klamath River. It is south of Crescent City, not north.

Today the Lost Coast Outpost regrets to inform its readers that we are once again soliciting your letters of endorsement concerning the races on the June 2 ballot, provided those letters are in the form of a limerick.

Look: We’ve demonstrated again and again and again that Humboldt County has zero sense of rhythm, and even sometimes has trouble understanding the concept of “rhyme.” These character flaws seem to be incurable.

But we’re doing this once more because the form does at least demand that the letter-writer put some thought and effort into their support of a candidate, rather than just recycling the copy-and-paste boilerplate provided to them by a campaign. Plus, even when they are total failures, as they usually are, endorsement limericks can be kind of amusing.

And we’re starting now, because even though ballots aren’t due back at the Elections Office until June 2, people can vote as early as next week! Time sure does sneak up on you.

Send your endorsement limericks to “news@lostcoastoutpost.com” and put the word “limerick” in the subject line. Include your real name and a phone number. No gross imagery, no libelous charges against the candidate you do not favor.

Here are some early-submitted endorsement limericks to get your juices flowing.

MARY BURKE FOR FIFTH DISTRICT SUPERVISOR:

Mary Burke brings exceptional calm
Even when faced with great qualms
She’s decidedly kind
Which is quite hard to find
And builds community with great aplomb

— Natalie Arroyo

JOSH NEWMAN FOR STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS:

While others stayed south in the fray,
Candidate Newman came to Humboldt Bay.
He met students and staff,
Will work on our behalf,
To make schools stronger in every way.

He understood our schools’ plight,
And marveled at Humboldt’s beautiful sight.
So when ballots arrive,
Keep our schools alive,
Help Newman win this fight.

— Jessica Callahan

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to help thousands of homeless Californians when he launched a new mental health court in 2023. So far, it has struggled to help the sickest, most vulnerable people, but a Southern California lawmaker is carrying two proposals this year that she hopes will fix gaps in the program.

Both bills reopen the debate among families and advocates over when it’s appropriate to put someone into mental health treatment without their consent.

One bill would create a pathway for the most severely incapacitated people to go directly from Newsom’s voluntary mental health court into involuntary treatment in a hospital. The other would make it easier for EMTs and other first responders to refer people to mental health court. Both bills recently passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee, despite concerns from disability rights advocates that they would force more people into unwanted treatment.

“While early implementation shows promise,” Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said during a recent committee hearing, “barriers in the current petition process are preventing the program from reaching many of the individuals it was designed to serve.”

CARE Court launched in 2023 as a major piece of Newsom’s strategy to get people in the grip of psychosis off the streets. It allows family members of people with untreated schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders to refer them into the court-based program, where they can work with a judge, a public defender and a case worker on a plan for medication, therapy, housing, and whatever other help they may need.

But a CalMatters investigation found the program is falling short of expectations. As of January, California courts had received 3,817 petitions on behalf of prospective CARE Court participants and approved just 893 treatment agreements. At its outset, the Newsom administration estimated between 7,000 and 12,000 Californians would qualify for the program.

Some families who attempted to use CARE Court to help their severely ill loved ones told CalMatters they were disappointed by the results. They thought a judge could order their family members into treatment. But that turned out not to be the case. If someone is too sick to realize they need treatment, CARE Court can’t help, which means that their case can be dismissed while the person continues to languish on the street.

That’s the problem Blakespear is attempting to tackle with Senate Bill 1016. It would allow anyone filing a CARE Court petition to request that a judge order a mental health assessment to determine if the subject of the petition is “gravely disabled” or a danger to themselves or others – if the subject can’t comply with voluntary treatment.

Depending on the results of the assessment, a judge could order that person into a conservatorship, which would likely mean a stay in a locked psychiatric facility and mandatory medication.

The idea is to create a formal bridge between voluntary treatment under CARE Court and involuntary treatment through a conservatorship.

Adding the specter of forced care will make people with mental illness less likely to accept help from CARE Court, Samuel Jain of Disability Rights California said during the committee hearing.

“SB 1016 adds an expensive, coercive and convoluted layer to CARE Court that will drive up costs and further erode the rights and trust of the Californians that our system is supposed to help,” he said.

Family ‘frustrated’ by CARE Court

Jennifer Farrell, who filed a CARE Court petition in late 2024 for her brother in Alameda County, sees it differently. Farrell’s 59-year-old brother, who struggles with schizophrenia and meth use, had been homeless off and on since 2017. He was able to stay housed via CARE Court for a few months, but then he left his placement in September and disappeared into the streets.

It was clear he needed more help than CARE Court could provide, but the program had no way to elevate him to a higher level of care, Farrell said.

“I was really frustrated at that point,” she told CalMatters.

Farrell’s brother spent three months deteriorating on the street before a case worker found him in December. He was hospitalized on a temporary psychiatric hold and eventually placed on a conservatorship. He’s still in a locked facility, where he’s medicated and seems to be doing much better, Farrell said.

To Farrell, it’s “absurd” that there isn’t already a direct link between CARE Court and a conservatorship — a connection that she thinks could have saved her family some grief.

At CARE Court’s inception, Newsom said people who didn’t follow their CARE plans could be moved into a conservatorship. But Farrell and other families CalMatters spoke with said if their loved one couldn’t consent to treatment, there was no clear path forward.

Technically, CARE Court judges can order participants to follow mandatory “CARE plans” — something that happened just 32 times between late 2023 and January — but judges can’t force participants to comply.

Easier CARE Court petitions

Blakespear’s other bill, SB 989, addresses another CARE Court challenge: the low number of people participating.

Filing a CARE Court petition is a complicated, time-consuming process. Whoever is filing the request needs the person’s medical records. Then, they need to appear at the first court hearing — something overworked first responders don’t always have time to do.

That’s a key reason that people who work in public safety, such as firefighters and EMTs, say they don’t file CARE Court petitions, said Meagan Subers of California Professional Firefighters, who spoke in support of the bill at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

SB 989 would create a framework for first responders to refer clients directly to their county behavioral health department, which could then file a CARE Court petition on their behalf. The county would have 30 days to decide whether to file.

Some counties already make an effort to train and support their first responders in filing CARE Court petitions. Stanislaus County allows first responders to refer CARE Court clients directly to the county.

But that collaboration isn’t happening in a systematic way across the state, Subers said. This bill could help fix a broken system where first responders are constantly cycling people with severe mental illnesses in and out of emergency rooms, she said.

“When our members have to run these calls repeatedly on individuals and take them to the hospital, knowing that they’re going to have to respond to that person again, my members tell me that they feel helpless,” she said. “We see this pathway as another option for them.”

Blakespear’s bills follow a similar effort last year by Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana to make CARE Court more effective. His new law, which went into effect in January, expanded CARE Court to include people who experience psychosis as a result of bipolar disorder. The program initially was exclusively for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other limited psychotic disorders.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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Picking the next insurance commissioner could be one of the most important decisions Californians make for their wallets this election year.

They may have seen a big increase in their insurance premiums in the past couple of years. They might know someone whose homeowners policy got canceled. Or perhaps they’re trying to rebuild after last year’s deadly Los Angeles County fires.

If you’re not sure what the insurance commissioner does, here’s a rundown:

• Regulates the nation’s largest property and casualty insurance market, which includes policies for homeowners, businesses, landlords, renters and drivers.
• Leads the Insurance Department, which reviews and approves premium rate increases.
• Regulates life, health and workers’ compensation insurance.

Whoever is elected to succeed Commissioner Ricardo Lara will have a long to-do list. For the past few years, insurance companies have paused writing homeowner policies or reduced their presence in California. That’s starting to change because of industry-friendly regulations Lara put in place, but premiums are still rising and the market cannot be described as healthy yet.

The L.A.-area fires last year highlighted other problems, such as homeowners dealing with insurers delaying or denying claims, discovering they were underinsured, or finding out there are no standards for smoke-damage claims. Frustrated fire survivors called for Lara to step down.

In a recent poll commissioned by the Insurance Fairness Project, a national insurance information hub, 62% of likely voters said they are very concerned about the cost of home insurance and 43% said they are not confident at all that California’s insurance system can withstand future extreme weather disasters.

Former insurance commissioner John Garamendi, who held the position two separate times and is now a U.S. congressmember, calls the commissioner job the second-hardest in the state behind the governor. Another former commissioner, Dave Jones, said the next commissioner needs to keep a closer eye on insurance companies and regularly examine their conduct, creating “clear enforcement triggers.” He worked on a blueprint with recommendations galore for Lara’s successor.

About a dozen candidates are officially vying for the position, though not all of them have active campaigns. The two who receive the most votes in June’s primary will move on to the November ballot.

CalMatters interviewed the five candidates who have raised the most money for their campaigns.

All of them are calling for more transparency and accountability from insurance companies within the law that governs insurance in the state, Proposition 103. They want to help reduce fire risk at the individual and community level. Most of them agree California should try to hold the fossil-fuel industry accountable for climate risks that are helping drive up insurance costs.

They want to reduce Californians’ dependence on the FAIR Plan, the insurer that’s mandated to sell fire insurance to those who can’t buy it from individual insurance companies. At the end of 2025, the plan had nearly 650,000 noncommercial dwelling policies, up from about 264,000 in 2022.

Here is how each candidate, in alphabetical order, plans to tackle the challenges.

Ben Allen

State Sen. Ben Allen. Photo via the California State Senate

Last year’s massive fires in the L.A. area hit the senator’s district. Along with other insurance-related bills, Allen has introduced legislation that would give the commissioner more power to hold insurance companies accountable. After hearing from his constituents about the department’s handling of their problems after the fires, he wants to boost the number of staff handling consumer complaints and create a consumer advocate position in the insurance department, he told CalMatters.

Allen, a Democrat, would take a more comprehensive approach to risk reduction, including by creating funding sources such as state-backed loans for hardening homes, and by bringing together insurers, builders, local governments, firefighters and the state to work on solutions. As part of reducing risk, he wants to restrict new construction in high-risk zones, saying developers who are building in such areas are “basically freeloading off the rest of us.” He also wants to “carefully and sensitively” find a way to incentivize those already living in risky areas to move elsewhere.

The senator — a lawyer who will be termed out of the Legislature, where he has worked on environmental issues — said his eyes are wide open about how tough the job would be, but believes he has and can create the relationships needed, including with an incoming governor, to address the issues. On the role of intervenors, members of the public who can challenge insurers’ rate reviews, he indicated he needed to look into it further and that they shouldn’t be slowing down rate reviews — adopting a refrain by the current commissioner, who is seeking to reduce intervenors’ power.

He has received the most endorsements from the who’s-who of state politics, including Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, both U.S. senators from California, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, and more than two dozen state lawmakers. Jones, the former commissioner, also endorsed him.

Steven Bradford

Steven Bradford. Photo via the California State Senate Archive

The former Southern California senator and assemblymember would establish a public-private partnership that would share risk with insurers to keep them in the state. What that would look like needs more exploration, Bradford told CalMatters.

The Democrat, a former executive at the utility company Southern California Edison, would invite insurance companies “to the table” when discussing land use and planning, and support a voluntary buyout program to encourage people to move away from high-risk areas.

He said funding could come from expanding an existing program in the insurance department called the California Organized Investment Network, which is backed by the insurance industry and invests in underserved communities, environmentally friendly and affordable housing projects, and more. Insurers’ investments in the program have grown from tens of millions of dollars to more than $1 billion in 2023, according to the commissioner’s annual report in 2024.

Bradford would push insurers for clear explanations when they raise rates, saying it won’t be easy but that because the state’s insurance market is so big, it “would behoove them to do what they can to be partners with California.”

He is endorsed by U.S. Reps. Adam Gray and Luz Rivas, state Treasurer Fiona Ma and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, plus Teamsters California, State Building and Construction Trades Council of California and other labor groups.

Merritt Farren

Merritt Farren. Photo courtesy of Merritt Farren’s campaign

The Pacific Palisades home of the former Amazon and Disney executive was destroyed in last year’s fires. He became an intervenor and pushed for more information on State Farm’s request to raise its rates as a result of the fires, which led to his campaign for commissioner.

Farren, a Republican, would create CAL Reinsure so the state could provide a backstop for insurers. The entity would be funded by a fee charged by insurers and would eliminate the need for the FAIR Plan because companies would be more inclined to write policies, he told CalMatters. The authority could issue bonds that could be sold in the commercial market, and would be backed by the state, like municipal bonds.

He would want to “revamp” regulations that get in the way of allowing new insurance products in the market, saying that he wishes insurers had a premium product that charged customers more but would “pay out immediately on loss without putting them through the drama and trauma they have to go through today.”

Farren said he sees the commissioner’s job as one of consumer advocacy, and invoked his days at Amazon, where he says the motto was to be the most customer-centric company in the world. “You can be a consumer advocate and still appreciate the fact that there will be no insurance for consumers without insurance companies,” he said.

Jane Kim

Jane Kim. Photo via Jane Kim’s campaign

The lawyer, consumer advocate and former San Francisco supervisor told CalMatters that the commissioner’s office has been “under-leveraged” and has the levers to protect people from the powerful insurance industry.

Kim, a Democrat and head of the California Working Families Party, has three main proposals around more government involvement, the main one to create “natural disaster insurance for all.” It would be funded by a portion of policyholder premiums that insurance companies would pass along to the state. The state would manage the fund, which would guarantee fire and flood coverage. Insurance companies would continue to provide coverage for other risks. It’s not her idea — New Zealand has the same system, and it allows the country to invest the premiums in preventive measures, she said. Establishing such a system in California could allow the state to invest profit from premiums that would have gone to insurers’ shareholders in its communities instead, she said.

She would establish a public option for auto insurance by expanding eligibility for an existing program that provides low-cost insurance to drivers who make less than $38,000 a year.

Kim also wants to provide Medicare for kids. She believes California should centralize all insurance authority within the insurance department instead of having managed health care handled by the Managed Health Care Department.

She acknowledges that her biggest ideas are for the long term and will require her to win over naysayers.

“I’ve heard it — ‘She doesn’t know anything,’ ” Kim said. “We’re all so tired of seeing candidates that don’t have political courage.”

Kim is endorsed by some big names, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — she was California political director for his presidential campaign in 2020 — Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressmember, and unions such as SEIU California, the California Teachers Association and the UFCW Western States Council.

Patrick Wolff

Patrick Wolff. Photo via the Patrick Wolff campaign website

The financial analyst, a Democrat who lives in San Francisco and has never held public office, obtained an insurance license ahead of his run for commissioner. Wolff told CalMatters that he has invested his own money in his campaign — $600,000, according to campaign finance records — and simply wants to help fix the problems he sees in the insurance market. “It would be the honor of my lifetime if I can do this job and really do this job well,” he said.

Wolff would create a report card that would grade how insurers handle claims based on existing market conduct annual surveys of insurance companies, which is now anonymized but which he would push to be identifiable. He said that would let the insurance department help customers decide which insurers to reward or punish for their behavior.

He would consider allowing auto insurers to use telematics, which companies use in other states to track driver behavior for underwriting purposes. He said it could help for more accurate underwriting and possibly even lower auto insurance premiums, but acknowledged privacy concerns around the technology and said insurance companies should be prohibited from sharing or selling driver information.

Wolff would roll out a dashboard that would disclose complaints about providers of life insurance. The insurance department is not making that data public, and he doesn’t see why not, he said.