Democrat Adam Hattersley, left and Republican CFO Jimmy Patronis are on the ballot for the Cabinet position Nov. 8. (Sentinel staff )

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, which is poised to raise Florida’s property insurance rates even higher, Floridians will determine on Nov. 8 who will be responsible for handling the state’s insurance crisis as its next chief financial officer.

Incumbent CFO Jimmy Patronis, a Republican, faces a challenge from former state Rep. Adam Hattersley, D-Hillsborough, who hopes to become the first Democrat elected to the position since 2006. Patronis has served as CFO since he was appointed to the job in 2017 by former Gov. Rick Scott and won re-election in 2018.

The chief financial officer position was created in 2002 and is one of three elected posts in the Florida Cabinet, along with the attorney general and the commissioner of agriculture. Patronis is only the fourth person elected to the post.

The CFO broadly manages the state’s finances, including accounting, auditing and investment, and also handles insurance consumer services, insurance fraud investigations and managing unclaimed property. The officer also serves as the State Fire Marshal and oversees fire training programs, education and services statewide.

A spokesperson for Patronis’ campaign declined an interview request, saying Patronis had temporarily suspended campaign operations while he responds to the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.

Hattersley discussed his campaign platform with the Orlando Sentinel in a one-on-one interview and later with its editorial board.

Both Patronis and Hattersley have backgrounds in business and public service.

Patronis, 50, is from Panama City and is a partner in his family’s seafood restaurant, Capt. Anderson’s, in Panama City Beach. He holds an associate degree in restaurant management from Gulf Coast Community College and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Florida State University.

He previously was appointed to the Florida Elections Commission and later represented Florida’s District 6, which includes Panama City, in the Florida House from 2006 until 2014. He has also served on the state’s Public Service Commission and the Constitution Revision Commission.

Hattersley, 44, was born in Boston and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan, where he also competed as a gymnast. He served as a nuclear submarine officer in the U.S. Navy for eight years, winning the Bronze Star for service during a tour in Iraq, and taught electrical engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy.

He moved to Riverview in 2009, where he managed data and financial analytics for a General Electric subsidiary and ran a now-defunct promotional company, C-Suite Promotions, with his wife, Christie.

He was elected as the state Representative for District 59 in 2018 and served until 2020, when he campaigned to represent Florida’s District 15 in the U.S. House but lost the nomination to former journalist Alan Cohn.

Both candidates face rising pressure to reform Florida’s property insurance system.

Patronis’ 2022 legislative priorities included fighting rising insurance rates. He has focused recently on combatting insurance fraud, identifying it as a root cause of rising premiums. In the days after Hurricane Ian, Patronis deployed anti-fraud teams to counties affected by the storm and traveled to affected areas himself.

After Gov. Ron DeSantis signed bipartisan property insurance reform legislation in May, for which Patronis provided fraud-fighting proposals, Patronis praised the measure and said he remained “committed to fighting insurance fraud and bolstering our investigative services to further support our efforts to protect consumers.”

Hattersley said Patronis’ efforts haven’t been enough, with six Florida property insurers declared insolvent in 2022 alone and other companies teetering on the financial brink.

“Everything that’s come out of the Legislature has been focused on propping up the insurance companies, not protecting the consumer,” he said.

To tackle the issue, Hattersley said he would change the Office of Insurance Regulation’s leadership and investigate why Florida’s property insurance companies have failed. He also hopes to require companies to keep capital reserves in Florida to ensure they have enough to cover residents filing claims.

Patronis has made supporting Florida’s first responders a priority. Early in his tenure, he advocated for legislation that expanded compensation benefits for first responders diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He also worked to expand insurance benefits for firefighters diagnosed with cancer, allot more state funding for decontamination equipment and pushed for lawmakers to approve $10 million in funding for Florida’s Urban Search & Rescue teams.

Patronis also has joined DeSantis in calling for protecting consumer data from large tech businesses, and he has supported legislation to that end.

Hattersley describes his priorities as “insurance, investigations and infrastructure.”

Aiming to be a Democratic leader in the largely Republican-controlled government, Hattersley said he would like to audit every state department that receives tax dollars “to make sure things are being done up to standard for the taxpayers.” He would also like to spearhead improvements to Florida’s coastal infrastructure.

He plans to draw from his time in the Navy to find common ground with first responders as the State Fire Marshal. Hattersley said he wants to talk with officials involved in emergency response statewide to understand every county’s needs and equip them with the necessary resources to respond to small- and large-scale emergencies.

This strategy, talking directly with consumers and citizens and addressing their concerns at the state level, is how he aims to approach the CFO position.

“In the Navy, we had something called RCA — root cause analysis,” Hattersley said in an interview. “You keep asking, ‘Why?’ four or five times until you cannot ask ‘Why?’ anymore. That’s your root cause, that’s what you have to fix ... and a lot of these things I’m talking about, these are the core responsibilities of the CFO that seem to have been neglected for the past four years plus. We have to take politics out of your money.”

Complete election coverage can be found at OrlandoSentinel.com/election.

krice@orlandosentinel.com and @katievrice on Twitter