He spent three months in Vietnam working on the eradication of Trachoma, a treatable disease that leads to blindness if untreated.

Despite the Democratic landslide in the Watergate year, Hardwick came within 54 votes of unseating incumbent Councilman Lawrence Weiss, 1,569 to 1,515.

[6] He ran for Union County Freeholder in 1976 against incumbent Democrats Harold Seymour, Thomas Long and Everett Lattimore, but lost.

[7] In 1977, when Assemblyman Frank X. McDermott gave up his seat to run for the State Senate, Hardwick became a candidate for the New Jersey General Assembly.

[8] Running on a ticket with incumbent C. Louis Bassano, he was elected by 3,213 votes over Democrat Vincent P. Baldassano, the Mayor of Hillside, New Jersey.

On Wednesday, Greg Stevens, Kean's Chief of Staff, began making calls to secure votes for Walter Kavanaugh of Somerset County for Speaker.

During his fourteen years as an Assemblyman, Hardwick's legislative record included addressing the social issues around gambling, especially compulsive gambling, implementing guidelines for strip searches for people arrested for minor offenses and improving the adoption process by providing the health histories of biological parents when feasible.

[14] Eight Republicans entered the primary, with U.S. Rep. Jim Courter, who had represented parts of seven New Jersey counties in Congress, was the early front runner.

The other candidates included: Attorney General W. Cary Edwards and State Senators Gerald Cardinale and William Gormley.

But without mentioning the Governor, he attacked Kean's proposals for property tax reform and to create a coastal commission to control growth on the Jersey shore; he was highly critical of Kean's decision to renominate New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Wilentz, a liberal.

Hardwick had spent 25 years as a commuter, and his issue had appeared to strike a chord among many GOP primary voters.

[16] He said he is counting heavily on the Right to Life organization, the National Rifle Association and police officers' groups that have endorsed him to bring independent voters to the polls to register as Republicans and vote for him.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani appointed him to serve as Vice Chair of the New York City Council on the Environment.