Ricardo Lara

As Insurance Commissioner, Ricardo Lara will oversee a department with 1,325 employees, a budget of $287 million and a significant law enforcement operation. His transition team includes a man who until last month lobbied for a drug company that received a subpoena from the Department of Insurance.

The data shows how California's top-two primary left GOP voters with few good options—or an option they couldn't stomach—in several key races. 

Adding insult to the debilitating injury California's Republican Party sustained on Election Day, Democratic state Sen. Ricardo Lara has beaten Republican-turned-political independent Steve Poizner to become the the state's next insurance commissioner.

California Legislature politics, Democrats and moderate Democrats, open seats, Senate, Assembly, alcoholism and suicide among California lawyers, Other Bar

Election Day in California, turnout, Orange County, Legislature, supermajority, moderates, spending, death in childbirth, maternal mortality, greenwashing.

Several statewide races this year pit NorCal against SoCal, testing the political power and competing priorities of the Golden State’s two most populous regions.

Insurance commissioner candidate Steve Poizner is shunning partisanship in his bid to become the first no-party-preference candidate to win statewide office in California. But he is raising much of his campaign money from donors who gave to him when he ran for governor as a Republican.

California's school test scores, how the CURES opioid database happened, Jerry Brown's #MeToo bills, Orange County political money and teen pregnancy.

The conference featured promises to reduce greenhouse gases, vows to banish carbon, multilateral pacts and sincere handshakes.