Rick Santorum’s long and hard battle to find media coverage led him to a very unlikely place last week.

The former PA Senator was in Los Angeles Friday night to bring his longshot presidential campaign to the set of Real Time with Bill Maher.

“Four years ago, I was sitting pretty much where I am today – at the robust 1% level – and at the 2% level two weeks before I won the Iowa caucuses,” Santorum said, defending his current placement in the polls. “So if you look at everybody else in the field, no one else has been able to do what I have done, which is start at the back of the pack and finish first.”

Santorum pointed out a previous appearance on Maher’s old show Politically Incorrect, before Maher told him not to dwell on memory as “we’ve both smoked a lot of pot before.”

“That was a long, long, long, long time ago,” Santorum said with a sheepish grin.

The ultra-liberal comedian and TV host asked the two-time presidential candidate about his views on contraception and government involving itself in the bedroom.

“If you look at my political career, it’s got a pretty good body of work that has talked about providing people freedom and opportunity on a variety of things,” Santorum said. “Never once did I say that we should ban contraception … there are a lot of things that are immoral – for example Ashley Madison – that shouldn’t be illegal and there’s a role for the government to pay. [I believe pre-marital sex is immoral] but I don’t believe it should be illegal.”

After a predictable argument over the statistics behind climate change, Maher challenged Santorum’s religiosity – the candidate told Pope Francis to “leave science to scientists” when he issued an official encyclical on the perils of climate change.

“I like the Pope more than you,” Maher, an outspoken atheist, said.

“Let’s talk about facts,” Santorum rebutted. “The fact is lots of things cause climate change. And let’s talk about another part. what are you going to do about it.”

“If you look at what the president has proposed – an 80% reduction in emissions – and the consequence of that to folks that I am running my campaign on, which are folks that are blue-collar Americans, who are losing jobs to China [and] losing jobs to Mexico,” Santorum said, before Maher called him out for pandering to “Pennsylvania Coal Country.”

Several times during his campaign, Santorum has found himself in odd surroundings, including an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show last month. Santorum is trying to become only the second U.S. President from the Keystone state – James Buchanan served from 1857-1861 – but will need to differentiate himself in a field of 17 candidates.