Midterm candidates pivot to disaster insurance, datacenter fights — SkimNews
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- Jane Kim, former San Francisco county supervisor and Working Families Party state director, is running for California insurance commissioner on a single-payer disaster insurance plan modeled on government-backed programs in New Zealand, France, and Spain, after receiving 27% of votes in the June primary.
- California's insurance crisis — companies non-renewing thousands of homeowners in high-risk areas and the Fair Plan offering only limited fire coverage — prompted Kim's plan to automatically enroll all homes regardless of condition, with premiums scaled by property values and risk.
- William Lawrence, a Sunrise Movement co-founder running for Congress in Michigan's purple 7th district, is calling for both statewide and federal moratoriums on new datacenters and has featured the issue in multiple TV ads against Republican incumbent Tom Barrett.
- At least 11 datacenters are planned across Michigan, with three hyperscaler-size facilities proposed in district 7 alone; Lawrence cited voter concerns about water contamination, noise pollution, higher energy bills, and falling home values.
- Lawrence won 49% of the vote in Mason, Michigan — site of a planned facility — and a Data For Progress poll found over 40% of residents were "much more likely" to vote for candidates opposing datacenter buildout.
- UC Berkeley sociologist Daniel Aldana Cohen described a post-2024 "climate-hushing" trend among Democrats, arguing that embedding climate issues "organically amidst the other issues that people care most about" is necessary to build majority support for decarbonization.
Why it matters: Lawrence's race against Tom Barrett — who previously backed billions in tax breaks for AI developers — could hinge on the datacenter issue in a competitive purple district where 40%+ of voters favor moratoriums, while Kim's California commissioner bid offers a test case for whether government-run insurance can replace a private market retreating from climate-fueled wildfire risk.
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