14 Candidates to Seek Open City Council Seat in Oxnard : Elections: The field for the March balloting includes a former mayor who was recalled in 1984 and a Latino activist.

Fourteen candidates will compete in a special election for an open Oxnard council seat, including former Mayor Tsujio Kato who was recalled from office in 1984 after being convicted of shoplifting $22 worth of barbecue utensils.

The filing period ended Thursday at noon for candidates running in the March 2 election to fill the council seat left vacant by Manuel Lopez’s election as mayor.

The 54-year-old Kato, a local dentist and Oxnard native who held public office for 10 years before being recalled, was among the last candidates to file for the race.

His re-emergence into city politics comes exactly 10 years after he was caught shoplifting from a Sears Roebuck and Co. store in The Esplanade mall in Oxnard on Christmas Eve.

Security guards caught Kato taking the barbecue utensils. He pleaded no contest to misdemeanor petty theft, paid a $300 fine and was placed on probation.

He held office for 20 months after his conviction when Oxnard voters went to the polls in November, 1984, and ousted him in a recall election.

“I paid a high price and I think that is now in the past,” Kato said Thursday. “We need to go forward now and face the issues that are confronting this city.”

Other candidates in the race include current and past members of the Oxnard Planning Commission and a well-known Latino activist.

Council candidate Tony V. Grey, 55, is a former chairman and member of the Planning Commission. He came to the area 32 years ago as a Navy recruit, and has been the leader of several community groups, including executive director of the Filipino American Council.

“I plan to be a listener,” Grey said Thursday. “I want to know more about the problems affecting our community because my decisions will be based on citizen input.”

Candidate Ralph C. Schumacher, 62, is a member of the Planning Commission and an executive with Abex Aerospace. He has lived in Oxnard for 30 years and plans to stay in Oxnard after Abex closes its door next year.

“The voters in the last election said they wanted change,” Schumacher said. “I know that I have the experience and leadership in order to work on the City Council.”

Candidate Juan Soria, 60, perhaps is best known for a lawsuit he filed that forced the desegregation of the Oxnard elementary school district in 1972, and an aborted lawsuit filed in 1990 to force the city to elect council members by district rather than the current at-large system.

“There is a lot of hesitation on the part of some of the forces in the city to really get down and do something about the size of the bureaucracy that grew in the last decade,” Soria said. “It is largely that bureaucracy that is draining our resources.”

Others running in the race: Roy Lockwood, a retired fire chief; Thomas Edward Holden, an Oxnard optometrist; Lee Casey-Telles, a county Republican Central Committee member and anti-abortion activist; John D. Quigley, an Oxnard sewage treatment plant worker; Patrick J. Sammon, president of the Sea View Estates Neighborhood Council; Lawrence Stein, an accountant; Deborah DeMoss, an unsuccessful council candidate in last month’s election; Michael Racine, Alice Rivera Howe and John Patton Sr.

In the Nov. 3 contest, Lopez edged council colleague Michael Plisky by fewer than 200 votes to take the city’s top job left by Nao Takasugi.

Also, Councilmen Bedford Pinkard and Andres Herrera unseated the two incumbents.