“He was a very strong presence without being conspicuous about it. If a fight broke out, he would try to negotiate. He knew who started it; he knew how to let everyone withdraw from it. He could get opponents on policy to see there was a principled compromise.”

In Annapolis, he might be called Soft Shoes, the nickname for the quiet but very effective Senator Harry McGuirk.

This praise, however, was from Bill Moyers – for a Kennedy and Johnson aide, Ralph Dungan, in his obituary today.

There are other ways to describe the person whose focus is moving public policy in the right direction, often by compromise.

Along with Senator Bill Ferguson, I introduced legislation in 2012 to expand state funding for pre-kindergarten to all 4-year olds.

This week, I was a validator when Lt. Governor Anthony Brown and County Executive Ken Ullman announced their universal pre-K proposal.

I explained to a reporter that the slots law already authorized spending for pre-k from the Education Trust Fund, which gets the lion’s share of slots revenue.

With pre-k now on the agenda of the three Democratic candidates for governor, my objective for the next legislative session is to make the argument for the benefits from pre-k funding among my colleagues, along with Sen. Ferguson and the advocates for pre-K.

If you build the case, the money will come.