Ricardo Lara, a Democrat, is the California Insurance Commissioner, first elected in November 2018 and re-elected in November 2022; his current term runs through January 2027. Born in Commerce, California and raised in East Los Angeles by immigrant parents, Lara made history in 2018 as the first openly gay person elected to statewide office in California. He holds a B.A. in journalism and Spanish from San Diego State University and an M.A. from the University of Southern California.
Before becoming Commissioner, Lara served in the California State Assembly (2010–2012) and State Senate (2012–2019), where he authored the Super Pollutant Reduction Act targeting climate pollutants, legislation expanding health coverage to undocumented immigrant children, and early wildfire-insurance protections for policyholders.
As Commissioner, Lara’s signature initiative has been the “Sustainable Insurance Strategy,” which he has called the most significant insurance reform in over three decades. It requires insurers that use catastrophe models or reinsurance costs in their rate filings to write at least 85% of their statewide market share in wildfire-distressed areas, intended to move policyholders off the state’s FAIR Plan and into standard coverage, alongside wildfire-mitigation discounts of up to 20% for home-hardening.
Lara’s tenure has drawn sustained scrutiny. Consumer Watchdog documented insurance companies funneling $122,500 through a legislative caucus into an independent campaign supporting his re-election without disclosing the original source — notable because Lara had pledged in 2018 not to accept insurance-industry money; the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission opened an investigation into the arrangement. The FPPC separately opened a review after reporting identified dozens of trips, including roughly a dozen international, taken by Lara since 2019 with unclear business justification. A New York Times investigation found that his 2023 reform incentivized insurers to drop policyholders ahead of rate increases, a period during which FAIR Plan enrollment roughly doubled before the January 2025 Los Angeles firestorm; some wildfire survivors publicly called for his resignation afterward. None of these matters have resulted in a finding of wrongdoing to date, and Lara has continued to defend his reforms as necessary to stabilize California’s insurance market.
