Elected to the Perth-Andover village council in 1989, he represented the village on the Grand Falls Regional Economic Development Commission before resigning in 1991, when he moved to Fredericton to work for the Research and Productivity Council.
Savoy defeated the incumbent-Member of Parliament (MP), Progressive Conservative Gilles Bernier by only 150 votes.
On February 4, 2004, he was elected chair of the National Liberal Caucus, the first Atlantic Canadian to hold the post since Brian Tobin in the 1980s.
Despite his success in his first term in office, pundits suggested that Savoy faced a tough battle for re-election especially with the creation of the new Conservative Party of Canada out of the old Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties whose combined vote in 2000 was 63%.
This was not the case as Savoy was re-elected by a margin of 3,008 votes, beating the Conservative candidate Mike Allen 48% to 39%.