Meet Carleigh
Carleigh Beriont is a union organizer, teacher, local elected leader, and mom of two who has spent her life strengthening communities and fighting for working families.
At home in Hampton, Carleigh lives with her husband Eric — a proud public middle school English teacher — and their two kids. Hampton is a purple community on the New Hampshire Seacoast, and leading it has taught her that good governance means showing up, listening, and finding real solutions for real people.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in three years, Carleigh was a public high school teacher in the Marshall Islands, a country grappling with the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing and climate change. That experience forged a conviction she carries to this day: it's not enough to name what's broken. Leaders have to help build something better.
Back in the United States, Carleigh helped lead the successful campaign to unionize Harvard's graduate student workers and found UAW Local 5118. Together, they won higher wages, childcare subsidies, and anti-retaliation protections for thousands of workers. She earned a Master of Theological Studies in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD from Harvard, as a scholar of American history, foreign relations, and nuclear policy during the 20th century. Since 2022, she has taught at the Harvard Kennedy School, exploring how US public policy and religion intersect on issues from immigration and climate to labor, education, LGBTQ+ rights, and international relations.
Carleigh has helped elect Democrats across New Hampshire and in 2024, she won a seat on the Hampton Select Board. Now, as Chair, she serves as Hampton's chief elected leader — presiding over Select Board meetings, serving as Sewer and Election Commissioner, setting the town's policy agenda, and managing a municipal budget that determines whether roads get paved, the transfer station stays open, and the fire department has the staff they need. She also serves on the Budget Committee and spends her free time looking for ways to save property taxpayers money. Carleigh loves local government and working with her colleagues (Democrats and Republicans) to make life affordable and the community livable and safe.
She’s running because she believes we deserve a representative who fights for peace — someone who knows what it's like to work for minimum wage (her first two jobs were at fish markets), go on strike (she’s done it twice), bargain successfully for a contract, budget for a family on a single income, and serve in elected office.
Since launching her campaign for New Hampshire's First Congressional District, Carleigh has recruited over 500 volunteers. This campaign runs on dance parties, spaghetti dinners, postcard writing, and button-making — and on a simple conviction: politics at its best is about showing up and listening, so we can organize, build power, and enact change.
Carleigh’s Record
Carleigh graduated from Mount Holyoke College in three years, then taught at a public school in the Marshall Islands, a community still living with the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing and on the front lines of climate change. That experience sharpened a lesson she carries with her: it is not enough to name what is broken. You have to build something better.
She earned her Master’s from Harvard Divinity School and her PhD from Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She has spent her career studying the consequences of U.S. military action, teaching about international conflict and diplomacy, and living in communities scarred by the choices leaders make from far away.
Delivering Results for Hampton Families
Carleigh defeated two Republican incumbents to win a seat on the Hampton Select Board and has used that position to take on difficult issues and deliver real results for her community.
-
Carleigh led the effort to withdraw Hampton from a coalition of wealthy towns that was lobbying the state to make education funding less equitable. Hampton was the coalition’s third-largest funder. When she first brought the proposal forward, it was voted down 4–1. She kept organizing and making the case, ultimately securing a unanimous 5–0 vote to withdraw. The decision helped shut down the coalition’s influence and aligned Hampton with a more equitable approach to public education funding.
-
Carleigh worked with her fellow board members to reach a unanimous 5–0 decision to support keeping ICE out of Hampton, reinforcing the town’s commitment to safety, trust, and community cohesion.
-
Carleigh is the co-founder of the Hampton Alliance for Thriving Children, connecting parents of young kids with the resources they need to ensure their children are safe, healthy, and set up to succeed.
Why She’s Running
About a year before she launched her campaign, Carleigh’s daughter became close friends with the girl next door. The girl had moved in after her mom was hit by a car, spent months in the hospital, and lost her job, her health insurance, and their home. Carleigh spent the better part of a year trying to help them find a place to live. They ended up moving to a city 45 minutes away. That experience taught her firsthand how broken our housing system is, and how the barriers to helping people are created or made worse by broken policies and politicians who seem to want to help themselves and nobody else.
Since launching her campaign, Carleigh has put over 15,000 miles on her car (double the distance of a flight from here to Tokyo) holding conversations in living rooms, union halls, church basements, driveways, libraries, and coffee shops across NH-1. She doesn’t do quick campaign appearances where a candidate drops in, delivers a few rehearsed lines, and disappears. She shows up. She stays. She answers questions, a lot of them. And she asks one question everywhere she goes: what do you wish politicians understood better about your life?
The answers are consistent. People are exhausted. They are fighting insurance companies for coverage they already paid for. They are watching housing costs spiral out of reach. They are trying to budget for groceries, heat, and childcare, and there is nothing left at the end of the month. They are furious about the dismantling of public education. They are worried about neighbors being snatched from their homes by ICE. They hate the sense of dread that seems to follow everyone everywhere.
And here is the thing Carleigh keeps telling people: it isn’t only Democrats saying this. In NH-1, 40% of voters are independent, a number that keeps climbing, and she hears the same frustration from Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike. The divide isn’t between regular people. It’s between regular people and a political system that too often ignores them.
The country we want to live in is right in front of us. In Carleigh’s neighborhood, people look out for each other. They pick your kids up from the school bus when you’re running late from work. They bring over homemade BBQ and talk to you over the back fence. They run for local office and serve with integrity. Why, when the majority of Americans agree that they want to live in a country where everyone has healthcare, earns a living wage, has a good school to send their kids, and can care for their aging relatives, do we still live in a country where millions are holding on by their fingernails?
Maybe it’s because most congressional candidates spend most of their time looking for people with $7,000 checks and an agenda. Maybe it’s because of all 435 congressional seats, NH-01 is one of the only races where the outcome isn’t decided before the race is run. Maybe it’s because politicians spend more time trying to go viral on social media than actually listening to the people in their district.
More of the same won’t fix this. Better politics are possible if we support candidates willing to do politics differently.
NH-1 doesn’t need just someone who will fight against what we don’t want. It needs someone who will fight for something better. Carleigh is running because this seat is open, it’s competitive, it’s critical for flipping the House, and because what happens in this race will shape everything from reproductive freedom to voting rights to labor rights to whether working families get actual relief or more of the same.