Carcieri started his career as a high school math teacher, working in Newport, Rhode Island, and Concord, Massachusetts.

On February 20, 2003, The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, was engulfed in a catastrophic fire which claimed 100 lives.

The fire, which was one of the worst such tragedies in American history, was widely covered by the national press, which gave Carcieri's public statements on the event nationwide coverage.

[citation needed] In 2005, both houses of the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a bill legalizing medical marijuana.

As a result of the timing of the storm and of conflicts between various state agencies about who was responsible for emergency management during Carcieri's absence, there was inadequate snow clearance on major highways, causing gridlock long into the night and stranding several buses of schoolchildren in snowbanks for a number of hours.

Widely criticized for blocking the Lieutenant Governor from taking charge in his absence,[10] Carcieri admitted that his administration did "a poor job of communications"[11] during the storm.

[12] On March 27, 2008, Carcieri signed an Executive Order requiring state agencies and vendors to verify the legal status of all employees and directing the Rhode Island State Police and the Department of Corrections to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ensure federal immigration laws are enforced.

The bill's impetus was motivated by an event when the State refused to release the body of a man to his 17 year same-sex partner.

[14] In his veto message, Carcieri made the following statement: "This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.