Galibois, Giardino Vying For Cape & Island’s District Attorney Nomination In Tuesday’s Primary

Robert Galibois is seeking reelection as the Cape & Island’s District Attorney on Tuesday, September 1^st in the Democratic primary, and is facing a challenge from Michael Giardino, a longtime prosecutor for the office. There is no Republican nominee, meaning the winner will all but certainly become the next District Attorney for the Cape & Islands.

Giardino argues that the office currently lacks leadership, resulting in significant personnel turnover. Galibois, meanwhile, suggests the office needed an overhaul due to “complacency” and a change in approach to the job. The two spoke to the Current this week about their platforms, approach, and why Nantucketers should vote for them on Tuesday.

Galibois became the first Democrat to hold the position in 49 years when he officially took office in 2023. He said that a “deep complacency” had settled in over the previous 50-plus years under the Republican regimes of Michael O’Keefe and Philip A. Rollins.

"This office was under exclusive Republican control for 52 years, and what I talked about in 2022 was the complacency that had settled in over that half-century of exclusive control," Galibois said. "We literally witnessed the deep complacency when we walked into office. We didn't have a transition period, sir. Between the election in early November and being sworn in in early January, we got like a five-minute meeting right after the election, and that was it.”

Giardino was an assistant district attorney for the office from 2012 through 2024 – working under Galibois for just under two years. Giardino said he has always loved his work as a prosecutor – citing that it is an opportunity to help people avoid becoming entangled with the court system and provide any help, support, and resources they need after they have paid their dues. But as his time under Galibois progressed, he alleges he began to see “a breakdown in leadership and management.”

“I essentially saw the walls crumbling around me, if you will,” Giardino said. “In his first two years in office, we started to see excessive turnover, and it was uncharacteristic. It was prosecutors, victim advocates. It was admins and other personnel that included people who worked for the prior administration, and that included people who didn't work for the prior administration. It started to create instability in the office and not only in the office itself, but in the work that was happening in the courts. It was having an effect on young prosecutors who didn't have any resources or leadership to turn to for training or for guidance or for advice. But also, we started to see leadership positions not being filled, and that obviously is going to have a negative effect on younger prosecutors as well as the rest of the office.”

Galibois argues that wasn’t the case and that he raised the standard for people working in his office while establishing policies and objectives that modernized it.

One of the notable issues Galibois said he inherited from the O’Keefe administration was the lack of a human resources director. He hired Erinn Boon to assume the role and had her work with his First Assistant District Attorney Jessica Elumba, the first woman to ever hold the position, on establishing rules and policies for the office as well as annual performance reviews.

"We raised the bar for folks to work in this office,” Galibois said. “We thought that was important because taxpayers fund us, and we wanted to make sure we were getting the maximum effort of all of our employees. Some folks were okay with that new policy of ours. Some folks didn't embrace it.”

While Elumba, who was brought in from the Plymouth DA’s office, continues to serve in her role, Giardino pointed to Galibois’ second assistant position, which has had two turnovers in three years. He said the turnover throughout the office has ranged from people who were there before Galibois’ arrival to others who were hired by Galibois but quickly left within the first 9 to 12 months on the job. Giardino said he became a go-to person young assistant district attorneys and office employees would turn to for guidance and assistance with their jobs and how to navigate the work environment.

"In less than a year of the second assistant being there, he was demoted, and after being demoted in a short period of time he left the office and went to a different office," Giardino said. "Then he replaced that person with another female that he recruited off the Cape. That person came in and took the role of the second assistant. That person was there for approximately a year. That person, after about a year, was no longer in that position. So now you have that position turned over twice within the first three years of the current DA being the DA. What type of message does that send when you have leadership positions who are disappearing on younger assistant district attorneys? It's not a good one, and then they don't feel like that they have the resources that they need. They have less people to go to when they need help. And then equally, if the DA is removing people from high-level leadership positions, what is he going to do to an everyday prosecutor who's there trying to do the job?”

Giardino said this played a role in him leaving in 2024 and taking a job with the Plymouth DA’s office. He said as the turnover continued, it became more and more unsettling to work for Galibois’ administration.

“It sends a message that we're not going to be supported, and that created a culture in the office where I started to see people not being happy with coming to work, people afraid to make decisions, people who were overworked, and people who didn't feel like they were being valued,” Giardino said. “It got hard because it got to the point where even though I wasn't one of those people, it was getting hard for me to come to work because everyone was so unhappy around me, it made it hard for me to come to work and be happy. So, I decided to leave after two years.”

Galibois said Giardino left because they had a change of culture and not everyone was okay with the new way of doing things at the office. Giardino pointed to a letter submitted to newspapers across Cape Cod written by nine former female employees at the DA’s office who endorsed Giardino as the next DA while simultaneously criticizing Galibois for an inefficient workplace, high staff turnover, lack of clear policy goals, and alleged mistreatment or a lack of respect toward longtime female staff.

Galibois said all nine women supported his 2022 opponent, Republican Dan Higgins, and that one of the woman is the treasurer for Giardino’s campaign.

Giardino also accused Galibois of politicizing the position. Giardino acknowledged there are inevitably going to be moments where politics play into the equation of being DA such as dealing with community organizations and constituents, but ultimately the primary responsibility of the office needs to stay far away from politics – which is the everyday organization and mission of the office.

“The everyday organization of the office and the mission of the office, it can't be political. It has to be professional," Giardino said. "If it is political, people are going to be treated unfairly. If prosecutions are politically motivated, we're going to see people coming through the system be treated unfairly. It could be the defendant. It could be a victim who's on the other side because of again whatever the political motivation is, it could be the prosecutor who's asked to stand up on a case and has to make a decision that they don't agree with because it's a political one versus a professional one, and it can be the defendant. Prosecutions have to be professional, not political, and that's the type of office that I want to run. I want a professional office where everyone feels supported, so that we're giving the Cape and Islands the services that they really deserve.”

Galibois responded noting that Giardino supported Higgins in 2022 and had been unenrolled from the Democratic Party the previous 10 years. He insinuated that Giardino was the one playing politics in order to give himself better odds at winning the race.

"What matters more, honestly, than the affiliation per se is who my opponent represents and why he chose to affiliate as a Democrat after not having done so through most of his adult life," Galibois said. "For the past 10 years, when he was technically unenrolled, he has supported Republicans. He voted in a Republican primary in 2016 and 2022. He decided to leave this office and go to the last remaining Republican DA in the state. So, in terms of politicizing, I think he's politicizing it, not me.”

Giardino said he became an unenrolled voter because he felt it was important to have options when voting in primaries and local elections that affected the community. He said whenever he voted in a Republican primary, it was due to some personal connection and not to support candidates such as President Donald Trump.

"I fully supported Dan Higgins. I voted for Dan Higgins and again, that wasn't political. That was personal," Giardino said. "Dan and I had worked together side by side for 10 years. He was a colleague. He's a friend, and he was qualified for that job. So again, that support was personal, not political. Again, the fact that I work for Mike O'Keefe and Tim Cruz (Plymouth DA), they want to say that that should be an indication of my political identity. It's not. My beliefs are my beliefs. I've been very clear about how I feel about people, equality, issues with ICE, reproductive rights.”

Galibois said some of the notable accomplishments the office has had under his watch include assigning victim witness assistants in cases where businesses were victims, something he feels is important given many business on the Cape & Islands are small businesses, and has also assigned them to cases where police officers were victims.

Galibois added that his team has been instructed from his first week in office to seek holding people as a danger if they were charged with trafficking fentanyl under the Dangerousness Statute, Chapter 276, Section 58A. He said the Cape & Islands DA’s Office was the only District Attorney’s office in Massachusetts not doing that until he arrived.

"I instituted a policy our very first week that we would move to hold people as a danger if they were charged with trafficking fentanyl," Galibois said. "These are not, and I need to emphasize, these are not people that are selling to support a habit. These are the greedy ones. These are the ones that are pushing the poison for profit. And now we have really interesting data to look at. In year 2023, fatal overdoses were down seven percent from 2022. So, we felt encouraged, like we were getting something done. In year 2024, fatal overdoses were down 35 percent from 2023, and then in 2025, those numbers just came out a couple months ago, fatal overdoses are down 53 percent from 2024. So, I'm proud of my team going forward with these dangerousness hearings and convincing the court to hold folks, and I think it's truly working.”

Giardino reiterated he has been a prosecutor all of his life at both the District and Superior Court level, and that he has handled complex and serious cases many times over the years to ensure justice is served. He said if elected, his objective would be restoring the office with leadership that can stabilize the overall operation internally so the work in the courts can be more effective from every angle.

"We have to create a culture where people want to stay and where they want to work," Giardino said. "We need to create stability in the office, and we have to let the people who want to do this job know that they're going to have support working here. That's going to create stability. We have to let them know that they're going to have the training and retention, the resources that they need, so that they can be successful in their job. Once we can stabilize the office, and I'm going to say I don't find it to be stable right now, once we can stabilize the office, we can then focus on doing the work and creating that consistency among our courts that's necessary because consistency is necessary. I'm always going to be available, regardless of whether or not we're in this high level of turnover or not so I can be that consistent person. I'm not afraid of that. But to get to that level of consistency (in the courts) we have to work on stabilization. And to do that, I think we need to work on the inside of the office first and make sure that we create a culture where we can be successful.”