Mara Elliott Should Not Be Rewarded with a Promotion to the State Senate

The candidacy of Mara Elliott for California State Senate District 40 should raise more than an eyebrow among voters familiar with her record as San Diego City Attorney. Her tenure is better remembered for a court-found ethics violation, the squandering of the city’s tax dollars, and the chaos of costly litigation.

She is best known for the 101 Ash Street debacle, a failed real estate deal that has cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. But there were other failures San Diegans are still paying for today.

Elliott’s office signed off on a fatally flawed contract that benefited a wealthy developer at taxpayers’ expense: a lease-to-own agreement for an asbestos-contaminated downtown high-rise. The city never inspected the building before closing escrow, relying instead on the seller’s own condition reports, which expressly excluded asbestos. Her office approved the deal as to form and legality anyway. A later city audit concluded that the City Attorney’s Office “did not consistently document and communicate the legal risks presented in the contracts to acquire buildings, resulting in decisionmakers lacking crucial information.”

Elliott then chose to fight a wrongful termination suit brought by Marlea Dell’Anno, a former Assistant City Attorney who had run the Criminal Division and its roughly 160 attorneys and staff. Dell’Anno alleged whistleblower retaliation, claiming she was fired for refusing to file weak and politically motivated prosecutions demanded by then City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. Elliott refused to settle, used expensive outside counsel, and defended the case vigorously. After a nearly six-week trial, a jury returned a verdict of $3,892,490 against the city on March 23, 2022. With attorney fees, costs, and interest that accrued after the city missed its payment deadline, Dell’Anno’s lawyer collected a check for $5,928,500 in December 2022, every dollar of it borne by taxpayers because the city is self-insured. Elliott then sued the city’s own outside counsel, Burke, Williams & Sorensen, for malpractice in July 2022, and quietly dropped the case the following spring. Senior Chief Deputy City Attorney Mark Skeels alleged that the city’s outside counsel had pressured him over how he would testify against his own employer. After Skeels filed a sworn declaration, he was placed on administrative leave and fired in September 2021. He sued, and the city paid him another $542,500 in settlement.

In People v. Houser, the appellate division of the San Diego County Superior Court held that the Office of the City Attorney violated Brady v. Maryland by failing to seek, review, or disclose exculpatory evidence, including police body camera footage the defense pursued through repeated requests and a series of court orders. The court found that the office had tried to hand its constitutional disclosure duty to the San Diego police department and that it “did nothing to discharge its Brady obligations.” The trial court dismissed the case as a sanction. Elliott’s office appealed the dismissal and lost.

Mara Elliott’s tenure was consumed by the abuse of the legal system and the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars on senseless litigation with no accountability. It should not be rewarded with a promotion.