In Florida, as Hurricane Isaias blasted through the panhandle, the candidates for governor jousted over who could best tame the highest home insurance rates in the country.
In North Carolina, where flooding and skyrocketing construction costs have lifted premiums, voters are weighing a constitutional amendment to cap property taxes.
And in Kansas, where hail storms and intense winds have pushed the cost of insuring a house into the top five nationwide, a usually sleepy race for insurance commissioner is surprisingly fierce.
In the angry debate over soaring costs of living this campaign season, the price of keeping a roof overhead — specifically insurance and property taxes — has joined gas, diesel, and groceries as a top voter concern three weeks before the midterm elections.
Rising homeowners rates — driven by the fires, hurricanes and tornadoes worsened by climate change — have helped put reliably Republican states like Kansas and Florida onto the battlefield, pushed North Carolina toward the Democrats and roiled Democratic politics in California.
Home-insurance premiums have climbed 46 percent since 2021, nearly triple the rate of inflation. One recent survey found that 58 percent of Americans said rising insurance costs would make them more likely to vote.
In another poll conducted in Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and North Carolina, respondents overwhelmingly wanted elected officials to do more to reduce premiums and hold companies more accountable.
Nearly one-third of North Carolinians and more than a quarter of Kansans said they had postponed major purchases or life decisions because of insurance spikes.
That has forced politicians to respond.
“We’re going to go to bat for them,” Daniel Hawkins, the Republican Speaker of the Kansas House running for insurance commissioner, promised voters at a recent fund-raiser in Wichita. And if insurance companies make people’s lives difficult, he warned, “I will be their worst nightmare.”
Hurricanes and wildfires might grab the headlines, but out of the 10 most expensive states for home insurance, six sit in the nation’s midsection, in high-risk corridors known as Tornado Alley and Hail Alley.
In Kansas, where insurance claim payouts have nearly doubled in two years to $879 million, the annual premium for a $300,000 house with a $1,000 deductible is now $5,289 — 84 percent higher than the national average.
Two years ago, Sarah Lopez-Lewis and her husband, Brent Lewis, Wichita natives with backgrounds in health care and education, were informed by their mortgage company that their monthly payment would jump from $3,000 to $4,000, driven by taxes and insurance.
The timing was brutal. With their twin toddler daughters requiring specialized medical care, the Lewises had left their jobs to launch a nonprofit focused on affordable child care. Reluctantly, they put their house on the market and moved last month into a townhouse rental in a Kansas City exurb closer to the girls’ doctors.
“It’s harder and harder to take care of all the things we need and the taxes to pay — the weather’s changing and insurance is harder and harder to afford,” Mr. Lewis said.
One thing within their control, though, is voting for a new insurance commissioner to regulate the rates and conduct of home, health and auto insurance companies.
Mr. Hawkins’ opponent, State Senator Dinah Sykes, the chamber’s Democratic leader, represents Johnson County, outside Kansas City, Kan. Elected in 2016 as a Republican, she was one of four legislators, all women, to switch parties two years later, uncomfortable with the party’s rightward tilt.
A self-described “data nerd,” Ms. Sykes, 49, wants the office to do more to protect consumers. She says that her lack of ties to the insurance industry gives her a fresh perspective, in contrast to Mr. Hawkins, an employee benefits consultant with decades of experience in insurance.
“I don’t think you should have the fox guarding the henhouse,” she said at a fund-raiser at the home of David Toland, the state’s term-limited lieutenant governor and commerce secretary, in Iola, Kan.
Mr. Hawkins, 65, acknowledged that national headwinds may affect state Republicans, but he said his conservative legislative record and business background would help him “hit the ground running,” if elected.
“Do you want somebody that has 32 years of experience and extensive knowledge of the insurance industry, or do you want somebody to come in and fake it until they make it?” asked Mr. Hawkins, who was first elected as a state representative in 2012.
Two other states are electing new insurance commissioners in November — California and Oklahoma — while Georgia’s Republican incumbent is seeking re-election.
California voters will choose between two Democrats: State Senator Ben Allen, who represents the Pacific Palisades area destroyed by last year’s wildfires, and Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor, who has rolled out a single-payer, state-run disaster plan modeled after New Zealand.
In Oklahoma, Bob Sullivan, an insurance executive who ran a populist campaign to “Make Insurance Fair Again,” upset the Republican establishment’s preferred candidate, a longtime legislator, in the primary. Oklahoma voters are also weighing a constitutional amendment to lower annual property assessment caps.
In Florida, Representative Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, and former Representative David Jolly, his Democratic opponent, have clashed over home insurance and a ballot measure expanding homestead property tax exemptions.
Supporters of the measure argue it will aid homeowners crushed by surging insurance costs, while critics warn that local governments would be starved of funds for schools and emergency services.
“When people have affordability challenges, I think there can be this sort of knee-jerk response by saying we should just suppress prices everywhere to help people,” said Carolyn Kousky, an economist and founder of Insurance for Good, a nonprofit focused on climate risk and disaster recovery.
The burden of insurance has gotten to the point where an estimated one-in-seven homeowners are opting to go without insurance to pay other bills.
In Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., that group includes Gilbert Kirk, 71. He was watching late-night television with his dog Beetle in mid-August when a severe storm tore through his house, trapping him under debris for hours, until a neighbor pulled him out.
Weeks later, the house remains uninhabitable. On his to-do list if he moves back? Getting insurance.
“I had everything I needed and then the next minute, man, it’s all gone,” he said. “You just feel empty.”
The post The New Affordability Fight in the Midterms: Home Insurance Prices appeared first on New York Times.
