Joe B. Glynn Running As Nonpartisan Option For First Barnstable District Seat

BREWSTER – Yarmouth resident Joe B. Glynn officially announced his candidacy in early March for the First Barnstable District State Representative seat, but unlike his two opponents, he is running as a nonpartisan candidate. 

 Glynn is running against two Democratic candidates, Chris Lambton of Dennis and Steve Leibowitz of Brewster. 

 His campaign is centered around the idea that the split in party politics has created a divide between Americans. “This is a major theme in the evolutionary and revolutionary approach to our campaign,” he said. “The parties need us, we don't need the parties.”

 Glynn grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. His father was a veteran and passed away when Glynn was just 6 years old. He remembers this time in his life as financially unstable, living under “one of the worst slumlords in the city’s history” with his mom and two brothers. 

A graduate of the public school system, Glynn chose to further his education at Cazenovia College in New York, earning a degree in human service and community social services.

“I obviously was interested in helping people from the beginning,” he said. 

After graduation, he interned in a number of political offices before enlisting in the military and eventually serving on active duty, in the National Guard and the reserves. 

“During my active duty time, I spent a hardship tour in Korea in the second infantry division in an attack helicopter battalion,” he said. “I returned state-side and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ken., where I earned my second Army achievement medal after earning my Air Assault Badge and winning the prestigious Air Assault School road march championship.”

Glynn was deployed with the 101st Airborne Division during Desert Storm and was among the first U.S. soldiers in Iraq. 

After returning home, Glynn moved to Cape Cod and attended the Massachusetts Army National Guard Officer Candidate School in Bourne. Although he graduated from the program, he was not allowed to deploy again due to a Desert Storm-related illness, forcing him to retire from the service. He then became a firefighter and EMT with the Boston Fire Department, serving for over a decade. 

Throughout his time as a firefighter, Glynn was back and forth between Boston and Cape Cod. He eventually settled in Yarmouth, sending his three sons through the Dennis-Yarmouth school system. 

Glynn, now 62, said he has lived in a variety of different housing circumstances throughout his life, including veteran housing, public housing, mixed-use housing and, for a period of time, in his car. He said housing is one of the most critical issues facing Cape Codders. 

His first step if elected would be to work to extend local preference past one round for affordable housing. He said many local housing units are being taken by people who do not currently live or work in the area. 

A priority of his is to make housing accessible for the local workforce. In addition, he wants to add a veterans’ preference to give veterans a better chance of accessing housing. 

He said there are ways to help develop more robust housing efforts if revenues are used strategically. 

“The Housing Assistance Corporation has revenues of over $20 million annually,” he said. “The towns all have housing directors and housing programs. All of these towns could’ve fixed up these houses and sold them with a buydown program just a couple years ago for $200,000. You have to be a visionary. You can’t solve problems backwards. That’s what leadership is all about. Unfortunately, the parties are too busy fighting with themselves to come up with any solutions.”

Another big motivator for Glynn is school safety. He referenced the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas at an elementary school, noting that there “are billions of dollars in federal funds for school safety,” but communities aren’t asking for the funds. 

“The school resource officer is the best value in education,” he said. “And you say, ‘well, how can that be? They’re not educated.’ They’re keeping the peace and the safety and security of these kids foremost.”

Glynn said that if a child has a mental health issue, school resource officers are better prepared and equipped to handle the situation than a school psychologist. He also said safety is the most important element of any school, because without safety, kids cannot learn. 

He mentioned Steve Xiarhos, who is the current state representative for the Fifth Barnstable District. Xiarhos worked as a Yarmouth police officer and served as a school resource officer, completing a number of different specialized training courses.

“Rep. Xiarhos was one of the first school resource officers,” he said. “So we have the people who train the trainers. We could get money for training other school resource officers and could use our [school] buildings in the summertime to do that training.”

Glynn said this could become a nationwide program that would also help the tourist industry. 

His third priority is the creation of industrial data centers, which he said “will develop public-private partnerships that will fund those housing gaps for first-time homebuyers with deed restrictions for starter homes and those new workers that come in.”

Glynn referenced an area on the Upper Cape where a number of homes were updated and turned into medical buildings, then recently torn down to make way for parking lots. He said they could’ve added solar panels to the area to save on energy, which could help benefit the towns’ budgets. He added that he wants there to be community input on these projects.

“It’s the same thing with the data center,” he said. “It could be in an industrial area of town or the suburbs where they could buy homes for their people. They could make deed restrictions on them, [like] only for hospitals. Or sometimes incentivizing housing for police and firefighters. Putting that in their contracts, you know, that’s the innovative stuff that you have to do.”  

 While Glynn has a number of priorities he is working toward, his main reason for running is to help represent the people in his community, whom he thinks have not been represented by the current officeholder. 

 Chris Flanagan was indicted on fraud charges last year and has yet to appear in public. 

 “The biggest issue in the First Barnstable [District] is the lack of representation we’ve had in what's despicable behavior, the stolen valor of the current rep,” he said. “It is the biggest issue because it goes to exactly why I’m running: the mob-like fashion the state legislature's alleged leadership protects is what George Washington warned was the problem with parties. They are engines of corruption.”

Glynn cited other state representatives for not calling out Flanagan’s actions. He said that he “will not accept payola for committee assignments and sell out the people of the district.” 

He also promised not to accept a salary until restitution is made to the people of the district, citing the James Otis quote, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” 

Over the course of his time on Cape Cod, Glynn served on the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School Committee for five years, was a member of the Yarmouth Housing Authority for over 10 years and served on the Yarmouth Substance Awareness Committee. While his kids were still in school, he helped organize the founding year of Shea’s Youth Basketball, announced football games for the Dennis-Yarmouth youth football league and eventually was appointed to the parents’ advisory council at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which all three of his sons attended.

Glynn said he is currently in the process of obtaining all the signatures needed to run. The primary will be held on Sept. 1, with the general election on Nov. 3. 

For more on his campaign, follow his Facebook Page under Joe Glynn.