When Marjorie Burnside moved to coastal North Carolina several years ago after retiring as a New York City police officer, she was a candidate running for an obscure statewide office overseeing agriculture, labor and insurance. I didn’t know much about him. So Mr. Burnside, a lifelong Republican, voted along party lines.
She currently holds many elected Republicans in her area responsible for rubber-stamping too many development projects. And she’s furious at the failure to rein in home insurance costs, which have soared 75 percent. That’s why she accepted an invitation to a recent beach house party by a friend of Democratic state Sen. Natasha Marcus, who is challenging the state’s Republican health commissioner.
“She gave me a lot to think about,” Burnside, 59, said after hearing Marcus’ warnings about loopholes harming policyholders and interest rates on the coast expected to rise significantly. “He gave me a lot of help,” he said. “More people, more bills, more raises, everything is connected.”
Eleven states elect insurance commissioners. The insurance commissioner is an obscure but powerful job that affects virtually all residents through regulation and can challenge or veto increases in rates for home, auto, and other insurance.
The contest is typically treated as an afterthought, with unknown candidates participating, and hundreds of thousands of voters leaving their ballots blank. But with housing and insurance costs soaring, especially in regions suffering whiplash from climate change and extreme weather events, these races have become a proxy for public frustration over pocket money insecurity.
“Voters are beginning to perceive climate change as an economic threat, and they are beginning to realize that health commissioners are now the architects of climate change policy,” said the Climate Cabinet, which supports candidates in nationally competitive elections. says climate finance strategist Jordan Hedtler.
Concerns about insurance are already factored into this year’s local elections. In Honolulu, state Rep. Scott Psaki, who has served as Hawaii’s Speaker of the House since 2017, lost the Democratic primary after being criticized for failing to rein in condominium insurance rates. In Orlando, Democrats won a special election for a state House seat with an emphasis on property and casualty insurance, flipping a race that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis easily won in 2022.
Now comes the biggest statewide test, with recent polls in North Carolina, the most competitive of the four states in November’s Health Commissioner race, showing Marcus and two-term incumbent Mike Causey. A confrontation is expected.
And given the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helen and Tropical Storm Debbie in western North Carolina, the timing couldn’t be more meaningful. Compensation claims could total billions of dollars.
“Typically, with interest rates steadily rising and consumers being able to point the finger at incumbents and say, rightly or wrongly or indifferently, that you’re different, “It feels like there are a few challenges and hurdles to overcome,” said Callahan, a longtime independent insurance agent in Fayetteville, North Carolina. said Landon T. Bentham, director of sales and marketing for &Rice.
North Carolina has long been considered one of the states with a more stable insurance industry for both policyholders and insurance companies. Auto insurance premium rates are among the lowest in the nation.
The state’s nonprofit insurance company of last resort, a tax-exempt group of insurance companies required by law to insure real estate and spread risk, has been in the midst of a windstorm since Hurricane Florence hit the state in 2018. It had enough cash to pay out $1.5 billion in insurance claims for Tohyo.
At least so far, “big insurance companies are not leaving the state,” said Donald T. Hornstein, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He lectures on coastal insurance concerns. But a New York Times analysis found that while insurance companies in North Carolina have made a profit in 10 of the past 11 years, 18 other states will be in the red in 2023, up from eight in 2013. .
Against this backdrop, the North Carolina Rate Board, a nonprofit association of insurance companies authorized by the state Legislature to calculate premium adjustments, issued a % (including 99% in some coastal areas). Labor. Since then, the Department of Insurance has been inundated with 40,000 emails, calls and letters, and as the state regulator, it must approve any increases.
Mr. Causey, a former health insurance executive, has favored negotiating policies that affect the state’s housing stock. In May, he negotiated an 8% increase in interest rates, which mainly apply to rental properties, from the 50% or more he had originally requested.
The last time homeowners insurance rates increased, in 2020, the 24.5% requirement was lowered to 7.9%.
But Mr. Causey rejected this year’s proposal to increase homeowners insurance rates by 42%, setting the stage for the first public judicial hearing on the rate hike on Oct. 7.
“I understand where the public is coming from, because we’re all paying higher premiums, and inflation is hurting the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Coursey, 74, said in an interview weeks before the hearing. It’s the driving force that’s hurting people,” he said in an interview a few weeks before the hearing.
But Mr. Marcus continues to attack Mr. Causey, accusing him of approving too many rate hikes without holding public hearings. She talks about the little-understood rate consent law, which was amended by Congress in 2018 following Mr. Coursey’s input. Insurance companies in North Carolina are increasingly being used to charge homeowners higher rates than the state-approved rates.
Mr. Coursey often works closely with Republicans who have long controlled the Legislature, but he has sided with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper on home energy efficiency and resiliency, banning Republican-backed home upgrades. I opposed the bill. The Building Standards Act is in effect until 2031.
In response to Herren, Causey is renewing his call for the insurance company of last resort for vulnerable coastal properties to be expanded across the state. Marcus says the state needs to invest more in strengthening housing and that flood maps are woefully outdated.
Much of Helen’s damage was due to flooding, and few people in western North Carolina had federal flood insurance, which was outside the jurisdiction of the state insurance commissioner. Still, it was clear the storm was on the candidates’ minds Monday, when Mr. Coursey and Mr. Marcus held separate news conferences before their rate hike hearings.
The proposed rate hikes requested at the beginning of the year were much lower in western North Carolina than along the coast. When asked whether Herren would therefore be a factor in future insurance premium increases, Mr. Causey replied, “It’s very possible.” But he cautioned that it was too early to know.
“We’re seeing the effects of Hurricane Florence right now, but that was back in 2018, so we’ll have to wait and see how it settles down,” he said.
Part of the insurance commissioner’s job is to visit storm-damaged areas and establish victim assistance centers to assist residents with insurance claims and other needs. A few weeks before Helen, Causey traveled to the southeastern coast of North Carolina, on the opposite side of the state where Helen hit, after the storm unexpectedly dumped 18 inches of rain.
Homeowners in the fast-growing but high-risk southeast coast counties of Brunswick, New Hanover, and Pender currently pay an average of about $3,100 a year for insurance, which is more than most risk-prone areas. Up to 67 percent higher than other counties.
Paul Cafasso, a retired IT executive from the Danbury, Conn., area, is part of a wave of retirees from the Northeast who have moved to Brunswick County’s sprawling developments. The county’s population of people 65 and older more than doubled from 2018 to 2019. 2010 and 2020.
Cafasso, 81, a political independent, said his local condominium association’s insurance premiums have doubled in the past two years, forcing the association to switch to another insurance company. So he intended to investigate each candidate’s plans.
“With the bell curve, we’re in the upward part of the bell curve. No one knows where it’s going to end,” he said.
Jimmy Tate, a former Pender County commissioner and community college president, said during a farm tour that more and more people are struggling with rising insurance costs and are struggling to decide whether to buy insurance.
Tate, 46, a former Democrat and now a Republican, wants both candidates to hold corporate interests accountable and visit rural and underserved communities.
“If they really want to be taken care of, they can come to my farm or have a meeting at my event barn center,” he said. “I can guarantee you that we can fill a room with farmers from all over the region who want to hear their opinions on rate increases.”
Marcus, 55, known for his fiery speeches on the Senate floor, had his district gerrymandered by the Republican majority. She chose to run for commissioner rather than move to another area to run again.
In an interview, she said her experience as a lawyer will allow her to take a more adversarial stance when dealing with insurance companies.
“I’m a former litigator, so I’m very used to courtroom-like environments, and I’m eager to do that type of cross-examination,” she said.
In contrast to Causey, Marcus, who has refused to accept campaign contributions from the insurance industry, raised more than $427,000, nearly twice as much as his opponent.
Causey has become a visible presence across the storm-ravaged state, warning of the future.
In a meeting with insurance agents on the Outer Banks, where rising sea levels are causing homes to collapse into the ocean, Mr. Causey expressed his dissatisfaction with the state’s building codes.
“In 2017, we were ranked fifth best in the nation for building standards,” he said. “We’ve fallen to eighth place. We’re going in the wrong direction.”
