While reporting a story about presidential fundraising, I came across an interesting nugget.

Digging through Federal Election Commission records on the Web, I saw the name of Mark Stepnoski, who donated $2,300 to the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Was this the same Stepnoski who played football in the NFL, at Pitt and at Cathedral Prep? The filing listed an Erie residence for Stepnoski.

But these days, Stepnoski lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Without confirmation, I couldn’t be sure that it was Stepnoski and not a relative or someone unrelated with the same name.

I e-mailed Stepnoski and got a telephone call from him a couple of weeks later. Yes, Stepnoski said, he donated to the campaign of Paul, a Congressman from Texas.

Stepnoski, 40, who played most of his NFL career for the Dallas Cowboys, said he still has a home in Erie.

He said he became familiar with Paul’s political positions while they both lived in Texas.

The former football star said he agrees with some of the libertarian Paul’s beliefs, including putting an end to both the war in Iraq and the war on drugs. Stepnoski, an advocate for the legalization of marijuana, said the war on drugs has been a failure.

Stepnoski said the drug war has been a waste of time, money and police resources, has led to a “massive explosion’’ of the prison population and hasn’t affected drug use.

Paul’s longshot campaign, meanwhile has generated an incredible following among young people and on the Internet, though Paul is 72 and a great-grandfather. It’s one of the more remarkable phenomena of this presidential campaign.

Paul might further scramble the GOP primary season in Saturday’s Nevada caucus. He could finish a surprising first, though most of the Republican candidates have been focusing on Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

— John Guerriero