Merritt Farren lost his Pacific Palisades home in last January’s wildfires. Now he is running for California Insurance Commissioner on a platform built around what he experienced afterward: an insurance claims process he describes as a second disaster.

Farren, a Republican and attorney who held executive roles at Amazon and Disney, entered the race as one of several candidates competing for the office in 2026. CalMatters asked each of them to respond to questions about what the state can do for wildfire victims and for the insurers who have been pulling back from California’s homeowners market. Farren’s answer centered on two major proposals.

“When my family home burned in the Palisades fire last year, my community suffered a second trauma, handling a completely broken insurance system that fails consumers and insurers,” Farren wrote in a guest commentary.

He did not stop at personal testimony. In the months following the fire, Farren says he jumped into the State Farm rate proceedings as a consumer advocate and spent time since June 2025 working alongside insurance industry and consumer protection experts to develop what he calls ground-up reform.

His first proposal targets the regulatory structure itself. Farren says he would pursue a technology-driven overhaul of California’s insurance rules rather than layering new requirements on top of existing ones. He argues the current framework has failed to keep pace with modern risk modeling, pricing tools or customer service expectations. The pitch draws directly from his private-sector background. At Amazon and Disney, Farren writes, large and complex challenges were addressed through technology and a customer-first orientation. He is making the case that the Insurance Commissioner’s office needs the same approach.

His second and more specific proposal is what he calls CAL Reinsure. Farren wants to replace the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which has faced mounting financial pressure following the Los Angeles fires and has struggled to pay claims from the surge of policyholders who had no other option.

Under CAL Reinsure, catastrophic fire risk would be removed from individual private insurers and placed with a dedicated state reinsurance authority. Farren points to precedents in other jurisdictions: Florida’s hurricane reinsurance program, the United Kingdom’s flood reinsurance model, and the federal terrorism risk insurance program created after September 2001. The theory is that by separating the most extreme tail risk from standard homeowner policies, private insurers would find it financially viable to re-enter the California market and write more coverage at competitive rates.

The FAIR Plan’s troubles have been well documented. Enrollment jumped sharply as major carriers reduced their California exposure or exited the state entirely, leaving hundreds of thousands of homeowners with no alternative. The plan was not designed to carry that volume of risk, and the Los Angeles fires tested it severely.

Whether a reinsurance authority modeled on other states could work in California, where wildfire risk is geographically concentrated and growing, is a question that actuaries and consumer advocates have debated for years. Farren is not the only candidate or policy thinker to look at catastrophe reinsurance as a partial answer. Several proposals along similar lines have circulated in Sacramento in recent legislative sessions without becoming law.

Farren’s candidacy carries the unmistakable mark of a political outsider making a values-based argument for office. His commentary leans on personal narrative, the loss of his home and his decision to show his two sons that hardship should produce action on behalf of others. But he also makes a credentials argument. The Commissioner role, he writes, requires deep experience in business, technology and law. He is presenting his corporate background not as a liability but as the specific qualification California needs.

That argument will be tested against the field. The Insurance Commissioner’s office sits at the intersection of consumer protection, rate regulation and market stability. Commissioner Ricardo Lara has held the seat since 2019 and has faced criticism from both insurers who say his office slowed rate approvals and consumer groups who say he moved too quickly to accommodate industry demands under the Sustainable Insurance Strategy adopted last year.

Whoever wins in November will inherit a market still in distress. The Palisades and Eaton fires displaced tens of thousands of people and are expected to generate insured losses well into the tens of billions of dollars. Several carriers remain in a holding pattern on California expansion, waiting to see whether rate filings under the new regulatory framework produce the predictability they say they need.

Farren is framing his campaign as a rejection of incremental fixes. “Not tweaks around the edges or more political posturing, but ground-up reform that works for consumers and insurers,” he wrote.

CalMatters first reported on this issue.

Whether California voters conclude that a former Amazon and Disney executive with a personal stake in wildfire recovery is the right person to deliver that reform will play out over the next several months of a campaign that, given the scale of the January 2025 fires, is unlikely to be a low-attention race.