The issue here is first past the post. If this election had used ranked choice voting or another method requiring over 50% to win, he never would have won. He was recalled, but then won a plurality of only 35%: https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/03/13/fall-river-mayor-wins-recall-election

So the issue is that the voting system allows someone with 35% of the vote to win simply because there were a lot of candidates in the race. No way would he have won under RCV as he was never going to be the 2nd choice candidate of the 61% of people who voted to recall him in the first place.