Our Best Insurance: A Little Knowledge

It’s Feb. 21. Do you know where your insurance commissioner is?

Or more important, do you know who your insurance commissioner is going to be?

In less than two weeks, voters will go to the polls in statewide primaries, and one of the decisions they will make is whom to nominate to regulate California’s massive insurance industry.

Yet how many voters know who is running or what he or she is likely to do if elected?

It has been a little less than two years since Chuck Quackenbush resigned as commissioner after one of the biggest political scandals in California. It’s likely that he was elected only because of political apathy.

In 1994, with the backing of the insurance industry and a media-friendly face, Quackenbush seemed like a pleasant enough guy in his commercials. What possible harm could he do in one of the lowest-profile statewide jobs in the state of California?

Well, a lot, it turned out. Insurance is a complicated and well-developed industry with high-power players and a lot of money and influence. The commissioner’s job is far from insignificant.

When first elected, Quackenbush had little experience in insurance. He surrounded himself with political hacks and sycophants who eventually helped him alienate not only consumers but the industry itself.

Yet what made the scandal possible was the office’s low profile. Quackenbush lusted for higher office. So his cronies--confident that no one was paying much attention--tried to leverage his position with big-donor insurance companies to get him the money and influence he would need to run for something bigger and better in the future.

If Californians should have learned anything from his disastrous tenure, it’s that they are ultimately the ones making the decision about who holds the office, so they should not go blindly into the voting booth.

So far, however, with a competitive race for governor looming, the contest for insurance commissioner has had an even lower profile than in years past.

So who’s on the primary ballot? The fact that the question still needs to be asked demonstrates how much work voters need to do. Regrettably, television commercials will again provide most of what voters will know about the candidates.

In a field of 11 candidates, there are two Democratic front-runners and a Republican who has volunteered to go to the slaughter. Democrats will choose between two candidates with solid experience: Assembly member Tom Calderon (www.tomcalderon.com), chair of the Assembly Insurance Committee, and John Garamendi (www.garamendi.org), who served as California’s first elected insurance commissioner.

Like Chuck Quackenbush, Calderon has agreed to accept insurance industry money for his campaign, while Garamendi, who can rely in part on his name recognition, says he will not take money from the industry he is supposed to regulate.

Quackenbush has made the field toxic for Republicans. The only likely Republican contender--Gary Mendoza, who served as corporations commissioner under Pete Wilson--has chances that are, at best, bleak. So bleak, in fact, that he has not posted a campaign Web site.

One of these guys will be the next commissioner, and it makes a difference which one.

There are few Californians who do not have insurance of some kind--for their home, their automobiles, their health care. The insurance commissioner is one of the few state elected officials whose actions affect people every day in a tangible way.

The staff the commissioner chooses will shape the insurance industry for years to come on issues ranging from workers’ compensation to the California Earthquake Authority to consumer-protection matters that are the bread and butter of the Department of Insurance staff.

No one should enter the voting booth March 5 without a strong sense of the importance of what he or she is doing. We have made a mess of the post of insurance commissioner in the past.

Let’s hope we have learned from our mistakes and will be a bit more ready to cast an informed vote this time.