The story
Named after former Prime Minister John Howard, the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister, winning four consecutive elections. Howard led the centre-right Liberal/National Coalition to a landslide victory in the 1996 federal election over Paul Keating's Labor government, which was widely credited with Howard's appeal with "battlers" (ordinary Australians, typically working-class or lower-middle-class).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.