After Floods, Soaring Insurance Rates Become a Hot Election Issue

Few states elect their insurance commissioners. But in North Carolina, a proposed 42 percent rate hike and Hurricane Helene have raised the stakes in the upcoming election.

When Marjorie Burnside moved to the North Carolina coast several years ago after retiring as a New York City police officer, she did not know much about the candidates running for the obscure statewide offices that oversee agriculture, labor and insurance. So Ms. Burnside, a lifelong Republican, voted along party lines.

She now considers many of her area’s elected Republicans responsible for rubber-stamping too many development projects. And she is furious that they have failed to tame home insurance premiums, which have soared by 75 percent. That was why she accepted an invitation to a friend’s recent beach house party for State Senator Natasha Marcus, a Democrat who is challenging the state’s Republican insurance commissioner.

“She just gave me lots to think about,” Ms. Burnside, 59, said after listening to Ms. Marcus’s warnings about loopholes that hurt policyholders and rates in coastal areas that are likely to see a significant rise. “More people, more claims, more raises — it’s all connected.”

Eleven states elect their insurance commissioners, an obscure but powerful job that affects virtually every resident through regulations and the ability to challenge or reject rate hikes on home, car and other policies.

The contest has typically been treated as a down-ballot afterthought involving little-known candidates, with hundreds of thousands of voters leaving their ballots blank. But as housing and insurance costs have skyrocketed, particularly in areas experiencing whiplash from climate change and extreme weather, these races are becoming proxies for public frustration over pocketbook anxieties.