Goddamn.

I don't hit everything on the ballot here, but I do cover the ones that feel most important and controversial to me - and the ones I've been specifically asked about by my community. If I don't cover one you're curious about, reach out! I'll cover it and add it to the guide.

Now let's get busy.

In a rush? Cheat sheet at the bottom of the page.

And don't forget to like and subscribe ;)

State

Governor: Tom Steyer

In 2020 I spoke to Steyer at a small local event. At the time, he was running for President. I asked him from six feet away what he would say to those who believe that the fact that he exists as a billionaire is the cause of so many of the problems he wants to solve. The whole room clapped, but Steyer gave a bit of a nothingburger political answer. However, he seems to have come a long way since then. Not as far as I would like, but he acknowledges how obnoxious billionaires' conceit can be and promises that the rich should pay far more in taxes than they currently do.

Listen. You'll almost never see me stumping for a billionaire. The fact that our runaway capitalism (thanks Reagan) even allows for that level of concentration of wealth in one person is inherently unjust and is actively destroying our world. And Steyer is no exception, and it frustrates me that he still does not find the existence of billionaires to be unethical. However, he does think that the ultrawealthy should pay their fair share. He has pledged to not die a billionaire. He supports the one-time wealth tax on billionaires. More importantly, one of the main tenets of his platform is Prop 13 reform and closing loopholes that allow big businesses to pay property tax rates from the 70's. I can't overstate how important this is in. In 2020, The Schools and Communities First Proposition VERY NEARLY eliminated Prop 13 for major businesses and corporations; to this day I believe it narrowly failed solely because people were too busy fighting for Biden. Steyer wants to circle back and push this over the finish line.

Steyer's record on climate is simply unimpeachable. He's poured millions into various sustainability and clean energy initiatives, written books on climate change, and pushed ballot measures for clean energy initiatives. Steyer wants to use the billions generated by tax reform to fund a wide range of housing and clean energy initiatives. Crazy to say, but I think he's got the juice.

Well. He made his fortune as a hedge fund co-founder and senior partner. Farallon Capital Management (which again, he co-founded), invested in coal, tar sands, oil, tobacco, and private prisons. One might call his fifteen years of sustainability philanthropy a penance. Yes, he's apologized, divested, and put hundreds of millions into climate and progressive causes, but let's be clear-eyed about this entire situation.

I was lucky to attend a gubernatorial debate in Oakland this May and see what the candidates had to say in person. Mahan can speak reasonably well on housing, but leans on builders remedy more than I would like, which rarely seems to actually go into effect. He's also too moderate on criminal and racial justice for my taste. Porter is a brilliant orator and very compelling, but I don't love the horror stories about how she treats her staff, and she doesn't seem to have Steyer's laser focus on the tax laws that have crippled California. She would be a close second if we could vote ranked choice.

I was surprised how poorly Becerra performed in the gubernatorial debate in early May. He simply didn’t have specifics on how to fix California’s housing crisis. When the moderator pushed him for specifics, he floundered. The SF Chronicle (in their endorsement of Porter) says almost the exact same thing - that he isn’t fluent in key policy areas. To me this is immediately disqualifying in a candidate. It’s great to surround yourself with experts, but you should certainly know exactly what you’re pushing for. This isn’t amateur hour. Furthermore, he’s terrible on criminal justice and police accountability. According to KQED, his office fought against the release of police misconduct records, and threatened journalists for holding those records, and has commonly been heavily backed by police unions. On climate, he dragged his heels on investigating ExxonMobil; meanwhile, oil and gas companies have contributed half a million to committees supporting Becerra and he’s accepted donations from Chevron (and defended them).

There’s plenty more that could be said but the picture is clear. Becerra is a milquetoast, middle of the road Democrat. He’s too cozy with police unions and the oil industry, and doesn’t appear to feel any real need to shake things up. Some decent enough things would likely get done, but there would be no hope of the radical action we need to avert climate catastrophe and a housing crisis. California would trundle along, applying bandaids to major wounds rather than diving deep to fix a broken system. He isn’t it.

For me, it's Tom Steyer. His focus on fixing much of the tax loopholes that have put California into a tailspin, combined with his earnestness on mitigating climate change and his desire to fund that to the tune of billions of dollars, is quite the combination. Fixing Prop 13 alone is a game changer. I don't love that he's a billionaire. I don't love his past work as an exploitative finance bro. But he's spent fifteen years and hundreds of millions of dollars atoning, and he seems to have his priorities in place. I urge you to vote for him as well.

Lieutenant Governor: Michael Tubbs

The interesting thing about Lieutenant Governor is that the position has very little power. It's borderline ceremonial. The LG sits on three boards of higher education as a voting member (but no unilateral power), and is a member of several commissions (one which is defunct). And yes, they become acting governor if the governor is unavailable (surgery, coma, bad cell service, etc). That doesn't stop a whopping sixteen people from running for the position. Ceremonial though it may be, it's known as a possible stepping stone to future office - Newsom was LG for eight years before his ascension. So it matters, but its power is a fraction of what one might believe.

The Chronicle identifies three main candidates: Josh Fryday (former mayor of Novato), Michael Tubbs (former mayor of Stockton), and Fiona Ma (California Treasurer and former San Francisco supervisor). Grow SF endorses Fryday. I don't dislike what Fryday says. He oversees the California College, Climate Action, and Youth Services Corps, and says he wants to build 1 million housing units on public university land. But his promise to build 1 million housing units seems like a great sounding slogan which it's impossible not to compare to Newsom's failed promise to build 3.5 million homes. This role doesn't remotely have that kind of power, and to top it off, Fryday didn't support SB827, one of Wiener's attempts to accelerate housing development near transit. He had a chance to be bold once and he flubbed it. Now he's a proponent of SB79, but it seems a bit late to me.

Ma has a lot of legislative experience, but also doesn't seem clear-eyed about the limited power of the office. Every article I've read mentions the sexual harassment lawsuit the state paid hundreds of thousands to settle in 2024, too. She denies any wrongdoing, but yikes that's some baggage.

The Chronicle endorses Tubbs. He's shown a lot of legislative courage in the past, even when it cost him. He's fought for controversial (and desperately needed) housing bills even when it made him unpopular. His UBI pilot during his one term as Stockton mayor was shown to improve employment and health. He seems practical about using the role for what it is - a platform to communicate effectively and speak loudly, rather than having strong legislative power.

The League of Pissed-Off Voters endorses Oliver Ma, a civil rights lawyer who sounds pretty cool. But LOPV's sole reason appears to be that they want to support a DSA candidate. This is fine, but I didn't find it very compelling. And even in their endorsement they shout out Tubbs.

For me it's Tubbs. He shows a blend of political courage, power of rhetoric, and understanding of the best ways to leverage a limited role. I hope he gets in there and causes some good trouble.

Attorney General: Rob Bonta

Eh. Like the League of Pissed-Off Voters I'm apathetic about Bonta's weak spine on police brutality and accountability. But he's done some decent enough work holding recalcitrant cities like Huntington Beach and Woodside to account on housing. And there's not another viable candidate. So sure.

Secretary of State: Shirley Weber

Once again, the sky is falling and the world is ending because the League of Pissed-Off Voters and Grow SF agree on something. The main job of the Secretary of State is running California's elections, and they've gone off without a hitch under Weber's tenure. I know I have my mail-in ballot ready to go. Keep up the good work, Shirley.

California Insurance Commissioner: Read Until the End

Hold onto your hats. This one's going to be a ride.

This might be the most complicated race, and yes, that includes the gubernatorial and congressional rep races.

What does the insurance commissioner do? They're the director of California's Department of Insurance, which in turn licenses and regulates most insurance in the state. This is subtly tremendously important. All property insurance (home insurance, renter's insurance, all the nitty gritties of different coverages like fire and earthquake), all auto insurance - if you want to sell it, you have to be licensed by the CDI to do business in California, which is the biggest market for insurance in the country. Want to increase your rates? The CDI has to approve it.

This is especially tricky because California has been in an insurance crisis for the last few years. Insurers have either been exiting the market or refusing to insure new homes, causing a limited amount of options, less competition, and higher rates. Most important, it's been driving more people onto FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) insurance, which is a last ditch, bare bones insurance offered for fire protection only. It's an insurance association created by state law with its own president and staff. You pay premiums for it, but it's underwritten by every insurer in the state in the event that it runs out of cash. FAIR is meant to be a last ditch market for folks who can't afford insurance elsewhere. When wildfires really began in earnest circa 2017, insurers started pulling away from California, and more people started trickling onto FAIR. Major warning bells started going off in 2024. During the 2025 fire season, losses far exceeded FAIR's ability to pay out of its own surplus. FAIR issued a $1 billion assessment to the private insurers that are mandated to underwrite it - who were furious they had to foot the bill. The tl;dr is that FAIR was meant to be a tiny last ditch resort, but it's grown from covering 140k to covering over 600k policies today, and not just in fire prone areas. Broadly, this is because California's insurance market is unwell, due to high rates, limited options, and insurers pulling out of California.

How did we find ourselves in this crisis? Well, it's complicated, but some of it goes back to Prop 103 which passed in 1988. Prop 103 is why we're having this conversation at all - it made the insurance commissioner an elected position rather than a governor appointment. It also required the CDI to approve rate changes, and allowed consumer groups to challenge any rate increase greater than 7% AND force insurers to pay the legal costs. It requires rates to not be "excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory." Prop 103 was and is hailed as progressive and protecting consumers from corporate greed, but others say that it has not allowed rates to rise relative to risk of insurance, especially as climate change makes everything worse and we keep building in fire prone areas.

On top of it all, Prop 103 establishes a regulatory framework that CDI interpreted to exclude forward looking models, which are common in other states. This means they can't price say, wildfire insurance based on models of how bad it's going to be in 5-10 years, they can only price based on historical (past) averages. Insurance companies argue this makes rates artificially low. I struggle to disagree.

So we've already got a tangled mess and we're not even to the candidates. California's insurance market is unwell. We have a worsening, climate-change fueled crisis. Premiums are too high, insurers argue they're too low, there's not enough competition, there's too many people on the FAIR Plan which can't actually afford to pay out for climate change fueled wildfire disasters which forces private companies to bail it out, and makes more insurers leave the state, restrict new business, or stop writing new homeowner insurance policies. Insurance risk isn't well-represented in the price in fire prone areas, but millions of Californians live in fire prone areas, and we can't pull the rug out from under them overnight to the tune of massive premiums. And the spiral continues.

Before you start feeling sorry for the poor insurance companies and think we need to deregulate - these companies didn't go bankrupt. The top 5 California home insurers are still massively profitable with hundreds of billions in reserve. They choose to not insure because they can make even more money elsewhere. Some might cynically say they choose not to insure as a threat and a forcing function for the CDI to allow them to raise rates. They complain about losing money and claim they can't keep writing new policies. Consumer Watchdog (a consumer populist nonprofit that wrote Prop 103 and has spent 35+ years fighting to make insurers treat Californians fairly; they believe in strongly regulated markets) points out that they're still making money hand over fist in California if you look at their investments from policy premiums.

How do you solve this crisis? Well. Depends who you ask. Some say the machinery is broken. We need more transparency from insurance companies but we need to allow rate increases and make it easier for insurers to do business here, bringing back a more competitive market. More competition, lower rates. Others say we need to call their bluff since they're not going to leave a huge market, cap their profits and invest in more public insurance options. Some try to tread a middle ground of allowing forward looking models, but force them to actively insure, and mitigate the risks that are making insurers so skittish.

Like I said, it's complicated. And I can't solve it here. But for the love of Whitney Houston let's get to the candidates. There are 11 total. But per Ballotpedia and general media consensus, we can narrow it down to five: Ben Allen, Jane Kim, Patrick Wolff, Steven Bradford, and Stacy Korsgaden. If you filter by Democrats who have pledged to not take insurance company money, you get Allen, Kim, and Wolff.

Patrick Wolff is the indie darling of the slate. He's a financial analyst who has never run for office before. He's a wonky guy with the strongest background working in insurance. Not only does he have the most insurance experience, but he's stated he has no desire to run for any other office - he simply thinks he can absolutely fix what's gone wrong. His primary thesis: smooth out the mess of CDI regulation to jumpstart market competition, while holding insurers to account via accountability. He wants to fix CDI's long lead time to approve or deny rate modifications, allow forward looking models, but also score them on claims handling and service and publish those report cards. He wants to allow rates to rise in the short term, placating frustrated insurers. There's precedent here - outgoing IC Ricardo Lara has implemented a plan called the Sustainable Insurance Strategy which caused improvements in the last year, allowing small rate hikes in exchange for insurers underwriting thousands of new homes. Wolff wants this plan to keep baking rather than kneecapping it.

Jane Kim is the progressive champion. She largely wants to call insurers' bluff and cap the wild profits that insurers often make. Meanwhile, she wants to invest in a public state-run Disaster Insurance for All program that homeowners pay into based on the value of their homes, to make a large pool for disaster coverage and relief. However, folks that should be her ally like Consumer Watchdog think it's dead on arrival, and that it lets insurers walk away with their giant $170 billion-plus reserve built up from decades of premiums. They believe it would be impossible to build up the reserves required to properly work. On the flip side, insurers have shown they'll leave homeowners in the lurch, and the system as designed has failed 600k+ families on the FAIR Plan.

Ben Allen may be the in-between. He wants to allow insurers to price with forward looking models, on the condition they start issuing new policies. He saw the devastation caused by the Palisades fire in his district, saw exactly what his constituents dealt with in terms of insurance, and developed a framework based on it. He's also the most laser focused on actual mitigation, and authored a $10 billion wildfire prevention bond. He also has state legislative experience that Wolff and Kim lack. He's likely most aligned with Consumer Watchdog, which wants to aggressively protect consumers and make them actually pay instead of potentially weaseling out via Kim's state run plan. He would force insurers to cover homes that have implemented meaningful fire safety mitigation. He's a strong balance of not being quite as market friendly as Wolff while being more practical than Kim. Allen agrees with requiring insurers to disclose their fossil fuel investments, develop transition plans for climate risk exposure, and report the greenhouse gas emissions of companies they invest in (Jane Kim also said yes to all of this, but Allen has backed it up with his wildfire prevention work).

So holy shit there's a lot here. Who do you vote for? I can't tell you that. I've read and read and read. I've listened to interviews with the candidates. I can tell you at first I liked Wolff's wonkiness. He knows his stuff. He's a private citizen who simply believes he can fix this problem. I don't love that he didn't fill out Consumer Watchdog's questionnaire (the only one of my top three candidates to not), and I believe it's because he's likely less consumer protection and climate friendly than Allen and Kim. I like Jane Kim a lot as a legislator. She's smart, and a dedicated public servant, but I am unsure about her far out ideas here. And I like Allen's middle ground, his focus on mitigation, and his willingness to force insurers to actually insure.

If I had to choose the insurance commissioner right now, I would probably choose Allen or Wolff. But this is the primary. Two folks will advance, and I believe it will likely be two out of these three. Because it's the primary...I'm voting for Jane Kim. I have mixed feelings. However, I want a progressive to keep pushing more market-friendly candidates to the left. CDI needs to operate more efficiently for the sake of good competition, but the market, and profit-based insurers, won't save us. To be fair, I also want Kim to be forced to focus more on effective regulation, smooth operation, and climate mitigation. If Kim is going up against Allen or Wolff in the general election, then I want Kim to be forced to be more practical, and her opponent to be pushed to focus more on protecting consumers.

This was a hard one. I welcome your feedback.

San Francisco

US Congressional Representation, District 11: Scott Wiener

This one wasn't easy. I've met Saikat Chakrabarti at several of his campaign events. He seems like a smart, capable man, with a solid progressive agenda. The organization he founded, Justice Democrats, is responsible for giving us AOC, arguably the biggest progressive champion in the last several decades. I give credit where credit is due. But we're talking not about broad progressive politics but the US Congressional Representative for San Francisco. And Scott has done the work. The laundry list is long. He has fought a long, bitter, uphill battle to force California to build more housing. SB35 made it massively easier to build more affordable housing, SB828 completely quietly changed the game by forcing recalcitrant cities (San Francisco included) to rezone for housing or face loss of local control, and his magnum opus, SB79, makes it far easier to build housing near transit up and down the state. He is a legislative powerhouse. His climate bills are just as numerous. SB700 was a massive investment in clean energy incentivization. SB379 forced cities to immediately approve solar and energy storage projects. My personal favorite is SB253, which forces large corporations to report their greenhouse gas emissions. It goes into effect this year, and I know the sparks are going to fly. I could go on, but the long story short is that Scott has done the work, passing some of the most influential and climate and housing friendly legislation in decades.

I will say this - Scott isn't perfect either. I've been repeatedly disappointed by some moderate pivots in the last couple years as he has geared up for this race. He has long been more moderate on police funding and reform. And I've critiqued him for being extremely vocal about antisemitism (rightfully so, yes) while being incredibly quiet on an ongoing genocide (Wiener has critiqued the Netanyahu government and did eventually label Israel's actions in Palestine a genocide).

And what about Connie Chan? As a progressive I want to like her, but I've been consistently disappointed in many of her policy choices. She was against Car-Free JFK, a new jewel of a park in San Francisco. She continues to support opening up The Great Highway to cars again. Seriously, how many times are we going to litigate this? I would not support someone who repeatedly fights for cars over green, walkable spaces. But her greatest weakness, in my opinion, is housing. She's a housing skeptic who doesn't support Lurie's Family Zoning Plan, even though without it we have no hope of not losing all local control to Sacramento and the Builder's Remedy. She appears to enthusiastically support the Richmond's general resistance to upzoning and building new housing. This is exhausting and nonsensical. To be fair: I don't disagree with Chan on everything. She is a supporter of increasing rental subsidies, which I am a huge proponent of, as market-rate housing won't provide immediate relief to struggling working-class families. I support Prop D, which she co-authored (see below). But her Left-NIMBYism on housing and her consistent support of cars over green cities make her a last-place pick for me.

The Sunrise Movement, a climate activist group I was active in from 2019-2024, has a central tenet: "no permanent friends, no permanent enemies". The League of Pissed Off Voters carries a deep dislike of Wiener stemming from his time on the Board of Supervisors; this is one of my main divergences from them. Scott is not a permanent friend. I believe he will benefit from being pushed hard from the left on police funding and public safety priorities in general as well as pressured on support for the people of Palestine. Unlike the LOPV, I don't believe he is a permanent enemy either. For this race, I believe he has earned my vote.

District Supervisors, 2 and 4: #it'scomplicated

I don't live in these districts and don't have strong opinions. As usual, the League of Pissed-Off Voters and Grow SF are diametrically opposed, with the former endorsing progressive challengers and the latter supporting the more moderate incumbents. In such instances I tend to lean towards the LOPV's endorsements, but this time around is a grey zone.

D2: LOPV supports Lorie Brooke. However, I can't, in the year of our lord 2026, support a candidate who doesn't support Lurie's Family Zoning Plan, the bare minimum we need to do to dramatically augment housing production (it does not go nearly far enough, only making possible about a third of the housing mandated by California state housing law). So Brooke is a soft no, and I would likely vote for incumbent Stephen Sherrill.

D4: LOPV supports progressive candidate Natalie Gee, while the SF Chronicle has endorsed incumbent and Lurie appointee Alan Wong. I really like Gee's experience and strong progressive background, but she also says she would have voted against the Family Zoning Plan. There's a bit more nuance here at least since it's unpopular in her district, but sometimes a supervisor has to do unpopular things, especially when loss of all local control is the alternative. She does not seem like she wants to combat it now that it's passed, and is likely saying that to remain a viable candidate, but it's left me skeptical. I'll leave the D4 race to D4 residents. I don't love the mayor hand-picking the Board of Supervisors after recalls, but I think progressives need to be more practical on housing production and the necessity of building it everywhere - even in the Sunset.

San Francisco Propositions

Prop A ($535 Million Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bond): Yes

Generally speaking, if the SF Chronicle, the League of Pissed-Off Voters, SPUR, and Grow SF (a moderate organization I often disagree with) agree on something, then it has to be the correct choice. Prop A authorizes a $535 million bond to fund earthquake safety and emergency response upgrades and retrofits across the board. The League is apathetic about the funding that goes to SFPD's giant budget - $822 million, almost $100 million that goes to overtime, and almost 5% of San Francisco's total budget, that's a lot of money. But even they agree that Prop A is more yes than no.

Prop B (Limit Supervisors and Mayors to 2 runs in their lifetime): No

Prop B is kind of a weird one. No one knows why it's there, as there's no precedent for Supervisors or Mayors attempting to run again after they term out. Currently, the limit is only for consecutive terms, so hypothetically a mayor or supervisor could run again after a term off. Again, there's zero precedent, and this seems like a singular unnecessary stab at Aaron Peskin. SF Chronicle, SPUR, and LOPV all say no. Grow SF of course says yes. The answer is no.

Prop C (Prop D poison pill masquerading as a Small Business tax cut): No

Prop D (Augments the Overpaid CEO Tax to patch the SF budget deficit caused by Trump): Yes

Prop C and Prop D are weird. There's a lot of back story. I'm going to keep it brief. San Francisco is facing an even more brutal budget deficit due to losses of funds from Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Prop D was conceived by labor unions to patch some of this loss. It does this by modifying the Top Executive Tax (also known colloquially as the Overpaid CEO Tax).

San Francisco has had a Top Executive Tax since it was approved by voters in 2020. We apply a tax to businesses where the CEO is paid over 100x the median salary of their San Francisco workers. Prop D would tweak this, recalculating it so that the tax would apply to businesses where the CEO is paid over 100x the median salary of all workers in the company, regardless of their location. Because workers in San Francisco, a high cost of living area, are often paid more than a company's workers elsewhere, this means the Top Executive Tax would apply to more businesses. There's an easy fix though - pay your workers more, and stop paying your already rich CEOs so much!

Prop C was placed on the ballot as a poison pill to Prop D. If Prop C gets more votes, Prop D is nullified. They are in direct opposition. Prop C is being aggressively touted as a Small Business relief tax, with no mention of its direct poison pill to Prop D. This strikes me as disingenuous. Prop C would indeed lower taxes on some small businesses, those making between $5 million and $7.5 million in revenue a year (not exactly mom and pop shops). But it's being bankrolled by billionaire conservatives who want to avoid paying a bit more in taxes on their billions. Yeah, absolutely not. As a weak nod to our deficit crisis, Prop C would fast track the Top Executive Tax's 2028 increase to 2027. But it's still slated to decrease our city income by $30-40 million, worsening our deficit. Meanwhile, Prop D would increase city income by ~$250 million.

LOPV says Yes on D and Hell No on C. Grow SF of course says the opposite. The Chronicle has yet to endorse. SPUR says no on both, an odd move. But their logic on opposing Prop D - that it might drive businesses away - seems weak at best. The Top Executive Tax in 2020 did not create a mass migration like is always being threatened, and neither would this.

For me, it is a NO on Prop C and a YES on Prop D.

Sources and/or Further Reading

• SPUR Voter Guide
• Grow SF Voter Guide
• SF Chronicle Endorsements
• League of Pissed Off Voters Voter Guide
• Ballotpedia: California Insurance Commissioner election, 2026
• KALW: Here's who is running for CA Insurance Commissioner
• Consumer Watchdog: CA Insurance Commissioner Candidates Respond
• Consumer Watchdog: State-run Wildfire Insurance Fund Won't Work
• SF Chronicle Endorsement: Patrick Wolff for Insurance Commissioner
• NYT: Tom Steyer's Coal Problem
• HEATED: Can a Billionaire Fix California?
• SF Chronicle Endorsement: Michael Tubbs for Lieutenant Governor
• Ballotpedia: California Lieutenant Gubernatorial Election, 2026
• Little Hoover Commission: Building a Stronger Home Insurance Market for California

Questions? Reach out!

Have a question about a race I didn't cover? A different opinion? I'm all ears (eyes?) - feel free to reach out.

Cheat Sheet

State

• Governor: Tom Steyer
• Lieutenant Governor: Michael Tubbs
• Attorney General: Rob Bonta
• Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
• Insurance Commissioner: Seriously, read the guide for this one.

San Francisco

• US Congressional Rep, District 11: Scott Wiener
• District 2 Supervisor: Stephen Sherrill (weak endorsement)
• District 4 Supervisor: No strong endorsement (leaving it to D4 residents)
• Prop A: Yes
• Prop B: No
• Prop C: No
• Prop D: Yes