By Kurt Gonska on June 11, 2014

By James Nash and Michael B. Marois of Bloomberg News

Sandra Fluke, the California lawyer whose 2012 congressional testimony on contraception drew insults from radio host Rush Limbaugh, will face fellow Democrat Ben Allen in a November runoff for a state Senate seat.

Fluke, 33, came in second in yesterday’s eight-way primary, with 19.7 percent of the vote, according to the California Secretary of State’s office. Allen, an attorney and member of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board, came in first with 21.8 percent.

The race was the most contested of any of the 20 Senate primaries in California. Fluke campaigned for environmental protection, affordable education and repealing of part of the tax-limiting Proposition 13 law.

 

Fluke was a third-year law student at Georgetown University in Washington in February 2012 when she testified to the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee about requiring religious-affiliated institutions to include birth control in insurance plans.

In her testimony, she said she used contraceptives and that without coverage from Georgetown, a Jesuit institution, it could cost a student like her as much $3,000. Limbaugh told his 13 million listeners that she was asking taxpayers to subsidize her sexual habits. “She wants to be paid to have sex,” Limbaugh said, calling Fluke a prostitute. He later apologized.