According to the calendar, John Howard today becomes a “68er”, though of course, not the sort of “68er” associated with the summer of love.

The northern summer of 1968 saw student riots in Paris that undermined the authority of Charles DeGaulle. In the United States, the Vietnam War that undermined President Johnson. The sight of hippies going clean for Eugene was followed by heavy handed policing at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and a summer of race riots in many American cities.

But John Howard could be classed as a “68er” for another reason. It was the year he first ran for parliamentary office. In the southern hemisphere’s summer of 68, Howard contested the state seat of Drummoyne on 24 February 1968, against sitting Labor MP Reg Coady, an MP since 1954.

There had been a redistribution since the 1965 poll, Drummoyne losing some of Coady’s strong territory in Leichhardt, replaced by more middle-class parts of Ashfield. With these changes, and the popularity of the first-term Askin government, Howard had some chance of victory. He moved into the electorate with his mother Mona to concentrate on the campaign.

Alas for Howard’s budding state Parliamentary career, Coady was re-elected. You can see the result here.

Trailing by 820 primary votes, Howard could have just about made it to victory on the preferences of the 1,089 DLP votes. In the days when candidates were listed in alphabetic order, the DLP had a tactic of nominating candidates whose name started with A, B or C. The DLP candidate Michael Carroll appeared first on the ballot paper.

Unfortunately for Howard, second placed Coady benefited from the donkey vote, larger in those days when party names did not appear on the ballot paper. Coady gained an extra advantage of 19 votes from DLP preferences, and the chances of John Howard ever being premier of New South Wales receded.

Who would have believed that almost four decades later, he would be beyond 11 years as Prime Minister of Australia.