The sitting district attorney for the Cape and Islands is being challenged by a former member of the office in the Democratic state primary next month.
Incumbent Robert Galibois, who was the first Democrat to hold the office in more than five decades, is facing off against Michael Giardino, a former Cape prosecutor who now works in the Plymouth County district attorney’s office.
The two attorneys are the only candidates in the Sept. 1 Democratic primary, and the major local race on the ballot. With no Republicans on the other side, the winner is essentially guaranteed victory in the November state election.
In the campaign, the two candidates have highlighted their priorities for the offices, which handles criminal prosecutions in the Vineyard, Nantucket and Cape Cod courts, and pointed out flaws in their opponents.
Mr. Galibois, who has been practicing law for more than 30 years as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, was first elected in 2022 and is now seeking a second term. In an interview with the Gazette, he noted his work with the state court system to open a recovery court in Edgartown for people dealing with crimes related to substance abuse.
He also said he was proud of the efforts to bring services for child assault victims to the Island in partnership with Children’s Cove and Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. In the past, the children would do the interviews on the Cape.
“If a child was a victim of [sexual] assault, they had to make the trek all the way to Barnstable,” he said. “We need to be able to provide those services on the Island…. It’s too much to add on top of the trauma.”
In addition to the expanded services, Mr. Galibois said he paid more attention to Island cases than past administrations. He pointed to the rising number of indictments in Dukes County Superior Court over his predecessor’s last term, from 13 under former district attorney Michael O’Keefe to 42 under Mr. Galibois.
“It’s not like the district attorney’s office is indictment-happy,” he said. “We are just paying attention.”
In a second term, Mr. Galibois also said he wanted to focus on elder fraud, given the district high median age, the potential to open a special court for veterans and protecting immigrants who are victims of crimes and may be hesitant to seek out help.
During his last campaign, Mr. Galibois pledged to set up a satellite office in Edgartown with an Island-based victim witness assistant, a departure from past administration.
But victim witness services has come under strong scrutiny during the campaign, and Mr. Giardino has hit on the high turnover in the office during interviews and the CAI radio debate last week.
Mr. Giardino, who worked with Mr. O’Keefe and under Mr. Galibois before joining Plymouth County to handle to violent crimes in Brockton, said people left the Cape and Islands office due to mismanagement.
“What I saw, and a lot of the staff started to see when we were there, was excessive turnover of employees,” he said. “As a result, we started to see a negative effect on victim services.”
He said he wanted to bring more structure to the office in order to ensure that the Vineyard and other communities get the most out of their top prosecutor.
“I care about the people who come through the system and I care about the work the district attorney does,” he said in an interview with the Gazette. “I think the focus has to return to the work.”
Mr. Galibois said when he came into the office, there was a sense of complacency from Mr. O’Keefe’s time as district attorney.
“We found complacency both inside the office and in prosecuting cases in the courtroom,” he said.
He established annual performance reviews, which rubbed some the wrong way. Mr. Galibois also expanded victim witness services to include businesses that were the victims of crimes, such as larceny and vandalism, and law enforcement officers who were assaulted in the line of duty.
That also ruffled feathers with employees who felt that the services should be solely focused on everyday people.
“Some folks were okay with that, others weren’t okay with it,” he said.
This is Mr. Giardino’s first run for office. Born in Hyannis, Mr. Giardino went to Dennis-Yarmouth High School, graduated from Bentley University and worked at his family’s restaurant in West Yarmouth.
He later went to Suffolk University for law school and joined the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office as an intern. That started a 10-year career on the Cape and Islands, where he went from a district court prosecutor to the superior courts.
Mr. Giardino said he also wants to improve community outreach and bolster connections with law enforcement. In an interview earlier this summer, Mr. Giardino raised Mr. Galibois legal spat with the Dukes County Sheriff’s Office over records.
Mr. Galibois had demanded the sheriff, which oversees the Island’s jail and lockup, turnover more than 20 years of sheriff personnel records that the district attorney felt could one day be necessary for future trials.
Sheriff Robert Ogden pushed back, saying his office would supply records for specific cases when requested by the district attorney, but didn’t want to hand them over to allow the district attorney to have its own internal database.
A superior court judge in Barnstable eventually sided with the sheriff’s office, saying the demand exceeded what was required by law.
“At the end of the day, that was a waste of resources,” Mr. Giardino said in the May interview with the Gazette. “We need to be able to work with our law enforcement partners.”
Mr. Giardino’s affiliation with the Democratic party has also been raised by Mr. Galibois during the primary campaign.
Mr. Giardino now serves under the only Republican district attorney in Massachusetts, voted for Republican Dan Higgins — a longtime friend — in the last Cape and Islands district attorney’s race, and unenrolled from the Democratic party in 2016, before reenrolling in 2026.
Mr. Giardino said the focus on his past party affiliation is ridiculous and a distraction from focusing on the issues.
“They are calling mine into question because I’m running against him and I was unenrolled for a time,” he said. “Our day-to-day job isn’t about partisan politics. If we are doing it with partisan politics in mind, someone is being treated unfairly.”
The only other contested races in the primary for Democrats are for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representative seats held by Ed Markey and Bill Keating. Mr. Markey is facing a challenge from Seth Moulton and Mr. Keating is up against Craig Swallow.
State Sen. Julian Cyr and State Rep. Thomas Moakley have no primary challengers and there are no opponents in the Republican primary.
For Island Republicans, the only contested primary is for governor, where Michael Minogue is facing Brian Shortsleeve.
Early voting starts on August 22. The primary is on Sept. 1.
Editor's note: a previous version of this artcile contained the incorrect date for Mr. Giardino's reenrollment for the Democratic Party. It has been corrected.
This article appears in August 21, 2026.