Maron, Furr Say They Won’t Run for Council : Oxnard: The two were ousted in November. A March 2 election for an open seat has attracted 15 potential candidates.

Two incumbent Oxnard council members ousted in last month’s general election have decided not to run in a special election to fill an open council seat.

Ending weeks of speculation, Dorothy Maron and Geraldine Furr said Wednesday that they would not enter the March 2 contest, which so far has attracted 15 potential candidates.

Only one person, longtime resident Roy Lockwood, has officially entered the race to fill the seat left vacant by Manuel Lopez’s promotion from councilman to mayor.

Some of those who have expressed interest in running for the seat include current and past members of the Oxnard Planning Commission, an employee for a national organization of Latino officials and the wife of a well-known advocate for homeless people.

The field of candidates will not become final until the filing period closes Dec. 24.

Furr, a one-term councilwoman who finished third in the two-seat race on Nov. 3, said through her husband that she will not run in the special election.

And Maron, who served 12 years on the council before finishing fourth in the balloting, said she has had it with politics for now.

“I thought it would just be a good idea to sit it out,” Maron said. “There are a lot of other things I want to do.”

But Maron said it would be wrong to think that she is bowing out of the political arena for good.

“Don’t rule me out at all,” she said. “I love the political scene. I don’t know where I’m going next, but you can almost be assured that I’ll end up someplace.”

The two incumbents were defeated in an election that brought a historic shift of power to the Oxnard City Council.

In the Nov. 3 contest, voters chose Oxnard’s first elected Latino mayor, first black councilman and only the fourth Latino councilman in the city’s 90-year history.

In the mayoral race, Lopez defeated council colleague Michael Plisky by fewer than 200 votes, while Councilmen Bedford Pinkard and Andres Herrera unseated the two incumbent councilwomen.

In one of its first acts, the new City Council unanimously agreed to allow voters to fill the vacancy despite the $40,000 to $60,000 cost of conducting a special election. The council decided against appointing someone to fill the fifth council seat, saying that voters should make that decision.

Lockwood finished fifth in the Nov. 3 council race, and was the first one in line at Oxnard City Hall on Dec. 3 when the filing period opened for the special election.

Those who have requested candidacy papers but who have not filed are: Ralph C. Schumacher, an Oxnard planning commissioner; Thomas Edward Holden, an Oxnard optometrist; Salvador J. Singh; Gloria Postel; Lee Casey-Telles; John D. Quigley, an Oxnard sewage treatment operator; Francisco Dominguez, an employee for the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Los Angeles.

The others are Patrick J. Sammon; Lawrence Stein, an accountant; Jim Dreher; Tony V. Grey, a former Oxnard planning commissioner; Michael Racine; Eugene R. Trumble; Consuelo Judy, wife of homeless activist Fred Judy who was recently elected to the Oxnard high school board, and Alice Rivera Howe.