By Steven T. Jones
Michela Alioto-Pier has withdrawn from the race for insurance commissioner. “Michela suffered an injury to her leg which required surgery and will entail additional time in the hospital time to heal,” her husband Tom Pier said in a public statement. “The necessary recuperation, as well as the demands of her duties as a San Francisco Supervisor and as a mother of three young children, make a statewide run for Insurance Commissioner impractical at this time.”
We’re sorry to hear about her poor health. But like most of her progressive colleagues on the board, who already endorsed Assembly member Dave Jones for insurance commissioner, we’re not disappointed that her candidacy has come to an end.
At a time when insurance companies like the truly malevolent Mercury Insurance are brazenly pushing deceptive profit-making schemes and actively corrupting politicians of both major parties, we need a strong and independent defender of the public interest in this job.
And based on her well-established record of coziness with corporations and hostility to progressive causes, Alioto-Pier just isn’t that person.