USSR

Since 1981 Khodyrev was involved in party work in the city of Gorky. From 1983 to 1987 he worked as an instructor, deputy head of the Organizational-Party Work Department of the CPSU Central Committee. From 1987 to 1988 - the second, from June 1988 to November 1991 - the first secretary of the Gorky Regional Committee of the CPSU, simultaneously from April 1990 and until August 1991 - chairman of the Gorky Regional Council people's deputies.

Khodyrev was elected deputy of the Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) Regional Council (1990-1994), People's Deputy of the USSR (1989-1991). After the failure of the State Emergency Committee, he left the posts of the first secretary of the regional committee and chairman of the Gorky Regional Council.

Russia

Since 1991 Khodyrev was the head of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of "MIR" JSC "Soyuz". From 1994 to 1995 he was President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. From 1995 to 1998 he was a deputy of the 2nd State Duma as a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faction, and sat as a member of the Duma's Committee on Economic Policy. He resigned as deputy in 1998 in connection with the transition to the government. In July 1997 he ran for gubernatorial elections in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, but lost to the former mayor of Nizhny Novgorod Ivan Sklyarov.

From October 1998 to May 1999 Khodyrev was Minister of the Russian Federation for Antimonopoly Policy and Support of Entrepreneurship in Yevgeny Primakov's Cabinet, and resigned after the dissolution of the government. Until the end of 1999 he worked as President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. In December 1999, he was elected a deputy of the 3rd State Duma for the Dzerzhinsky single-mandate electoral district No. 119 of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, nominated directly by voters. He was again a member of the faction, and was a member of the Committee on Industry, Construction and High Technologies.

In 2001, Khodyrev again ran as a candidate for the post of governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, in the first round of elections he took the first place among the five candidates (24.44% of votes) on 15 July, in the second round on 29 July, gaining 59% of the vote, over the former governor Ivan Sklyarov (27% of the vote) with a 35% voter turnout. In August 2001, he also became chairman of the government of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (according to press reports for a "transitional period" of one year). On 28 May 2002, he officially announced his withdrawal from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in protest against the expulsion from the party of the Speaker of the State Duma Gennady Seleznyov, as well as deputies Nikolai Gubenko and Svetlana Goryacheva.

During his time in office Khodyrev was unable to improve the socio-economic situation of the region. In April and June 2005, deputies of the regional Legislative Assembly called on him to resign ahead of schedule and said that they would not approve him for a second term if he was nominated, even under threat of dissolution. On 8 August 2005, the former deputy mayor of Moscow Valery Shantsev was unanimously confirmed as the new governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.