He was the Civil Contract Party's mayoral candidate for the Yerevan City Council election which took place on 17 September 2023.

Avinyan participated in the four-day hostilities between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, for which he received a commendation from the Ministry of Defense.

[5] He held this position until August 2021, when he resigned, citing his dissatisfaction with the party's list of candidates for the 2021 snap parliamentary election.

In October 2018, Avinyan came under scrutiny after the investigative news site Hetq reported that a fruit-drying company founded by him had received a $35,000 grant from the state-owned Agricultural Development Fund at a time when Avinyan already occupied the post of deputy prime minister.

Avinyan denied any wrongdoing, stating that the company began the grant application process months before he was appointed to the position.

An Armenian court ruled to freeze 18 million drams ($46,000) worth of assets belonging to 168 Zham and Davit Sargsyan.

[10] In July 2023, the civic group Union of Informed Citizens alleged that the Civil Contract Party and local government officials were abusing administrative resources in support of Avinyan's mayoral campaign.

Specifically, it was alleged that Civil Contract vice chairman Gevorg Papoyan had asked local government officials in the Spitak community to draw up lists of Spitak-born residents of Yerevan, whom they would persuade to vote for Avinyan.