After months of political drama, Tuesday’s preliminary election for the mayor of Fall River will come down to the pivotal role of local voters — and the question of whether the seat’s embattled occupant can find support from a divided community.

Less than a week before the election, on a cloudy Thursday afternoon, some residents on Fall River’s South Main Street remained undecided on whether to support incumbent Mayor Jasiel Correia.

Lifelong Fall River resident Fred Gutowski said he just feels “bummed out” after voting for the now 27-year-old Correia twice: once in 2015, and then re-electing him as mayor in 2017.

“It's just a big let-down, as far as I'm concerned,” Gutwoski said. “You put faith in someone, and then something like this happens, and it's just not right.”

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors arrested Correia for allegedly extorting marijuana companies hoping to do business in Fall River. The allegations include wire fraud and bribery, accepting a “Batman” Rolex watch in exchange for work permits at a construction site, and allegedly forcing his chief of staff to pay him half of her $78,000 salary.

It was the second set of federal charges the mayor faced in less than a year. In October 2018, one year into his second mayoral term, federal prosecutors arrested Correia and charged him with tax fraud and wire fraud to the tune of $231,000, alleging that he used investor funds from his app, SnoOwl, for personal use.

Following the charges, a majority of voters in a recall election last March voted to recall Correia (7,829 to 4,911). But on the same ballot, Correia received the most votes out of the five candidates running for mayor — including Paul Coogan and Erica Scott-Pacheco, the two candidates he will face again on Tuesday.

For Gutowski, it was the second set of charges that set things over the edge.

“At first I figured, you know, maybe the guy deserves a second chance,” Gutowski said. “But after what I'd been hearing, that was a bit too much for me. I think it would be a bit too much for anybody.”

Michael Coward said the election has dominated conversations held in the leather chairs of his barbershop, Talk of the Town. “It’s the talk of the town,” he said. “People come and talk!”

Coward supports Correia, he said, and many people who pass through the shop agree with him.

“No one's perfect and people make mistakes,” Coward said. “But I’m a barber here and I hear great things about him. People seem to like him.”

Fred Guay said he’ll stand by Correia and supports what he’s done for the city. “I'll vote for him again if I have to,” he said. “I don't think he's guilty. I mean, he has to be proven guilty.”

Voters like Guay say Correia’s record of removing a controversial trash bag tax, improving the Waterfront and encouraging new business in the city is enough to keep him office, despite hefty federal allegations.

“It looks like he's done a good job, but if he's robbing people, it's not a good thing,” said Fall River resident Jeffrey Morrell, who as of Thursday still hadn’t decided who to vote for. “I mean, it looks like he's done so far so good, but it's just … after all this, what can you do?”

The question of what anyone can do — and who is allowed to do what, exactly, has persisted as a problem since Correia faced his first federal charges.

Members of the Fall River City Council voted last week in favor of ousting Correia as mayor, arguing that he had violated the city charter and was ”unable to perform the duties of his office” while facing federal charges. Eight of the nine councilors voted to appoint Council President Cliff Ponte as acting mayor — all but Councilor Steven Camara.

“I’m a strong believer in process,” Camara told WGBH News during a hearing recess last week. “All elected officials are beholden to the public, so it’s the public that should allow someone to continue in office or remove them from office.”

At a press conference the following day, Correia, who has returned to work this week, insisted he would not step down. “I'm not resigning as the mayor of the city of Fall River,” Correia told a scrum of reporters, “because I believe that the ability to elect an individual is solely the responsibility of the people at the ballot box.”

Correia referenced a letter that Corporation Counsel Joseph Macy, an attorney representing the city, sent to Correia and Council President Ponte in October of last year. Macy wrote that the city council doesn’t have the power to oust Correia based on the charter provision, which is unclear in its definition of “unable to perform the duties of his office.”

“A common-sense, plain language reading of the charter would apply this clause to 'sickness' or 'other cause,' which would be disqualifying in nature … by virtue of physical or medical disability or geographic impossibility,” Macy wrote. “Ultimately, the question of when, and how long an elected official may serve resides in the hands of the voters.”

Shannon Jenkins, a political science professor at UMass Dartmouth, said that in this situation, the power to either keep or replace Correia as mayor lies with the voters.

“A lot of charters in other places have a provision dealing with indictment,” Jenkins said in a phone interview Monday. “The fact that the charter is silent about it seems to imply that [the city council] simply doesn’t have that power.”

Jenkins added that the voters' decision will impact Correia’s fate long before a federal investigation could be completed and a possible sentencing could even be considered.

Jenkins, who lives just south of Fall River in nearby Dartmouth, predicted that Correia will be one of the two candidates to make it through the preliminary, and that he will ultimately lose to Coogan in November’s general election.

Another argument for letting the situation play out in the ballot box, Jenkins said, is that a situation where a city council had the power to oust a mayor has never happened before. “I think a lot of judges would probably be pretty wary of setting precedent where a city council could say, ‘You're not fit for office,’ and remove a mayor,” she said.

Coogan lost to Correia in the March election by less than 250 votes, a thin margin that Jenkins said will set Coogan over the edge, come November.

“You have those people who came up for the recall election, and they were motivated enough to vote,” Jenkins said. “They're going to vote in this election — but they're not going to suddenly vote for Correia.”

“I think there are some voters who will always like him, but I think his challenge is that there were some 7,000 votes to recall him,” she said. “I think they're probably going to coalesce mostly around Coogan, and that's the challenge that [Correia] has to overcome.”