Dodds moved to London in early 2000 and was a member of the Labour Party until 2003. She left the party following Labour's decision to take part in the Invasion of Iraq in early 2003, with Dodds being a strong opponent of military intervention. In 2005 she joined the Liberal Democrats following a meeting with Susan Kramer, then the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, and quickly became active in the local Richmond party. Dodds stood for Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council for the Liberal Democrats in the 2006 local elections, being elected as one of three councillors in the North Richmond ward. In 2008 she was appointed as Cabinet Member for Performance in the Lib Dem run administration, where she was responsible for the performance of the authority and ensuring that residents get value for money. She narrowly failed to retain her seat in 2010 by a narrow margin of 19 votes, despite coming top of the three Liberal Democrat candidates. She also contested a by-election for the same ward in 2012, following the resignation of one of the sitting Conservative Councillors. During the by-election she was the victim of false leaflets produced in her name, which were produced to look like official Liberal Democrat literature. She narrowly missed out on re-election by 146 votes. In November 2012 Dodds returned to Wales and moved to Welshpool. In early 2013 she stood for, and was selected as, the Parliamentary candidate for Montgomeryshire, which the Liberal Democrats had held from 1983 to 2010 by Alex Carlile and then Lembit Öpik. She contested the seat in both the 2015 and 2017 General Elections, as well as the corresponding Welsh Assembly constituency of Montgomeryshire in 2016. Dodds came second on all three occasions, with the Welsh Conservative retaining both seats. Dodds was elected as the Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader in November 2017, defeating Aberaeron Councillor Elizabeth Evans by 13% in an all-member ballot. In March 2019, Dodds was selected as the party's Westminster candidate for Brecon and Radnorshire. As the candidate for the constituency, Dodds attacked then-Conservative leadership candidate Boris Johnson's comments about immigrant communities where English is allegedly not spoken as a first language, describing Johnson, in Welsh, as out-of-touch with communities in Wales. Dodds won the by-election on 1 August 2019. She failed to retain her seat at the general election of 12 December 2019 after serving for 97 days, becoming one of the shortest serving members at Westminster. The female MPs with the shortest continuous service was Labour's Ruth Dalton in 1929, at 92 days, equalled by the Scottish National Party's Margo MacDonald in 1974.
