Fact-Check: Three Claims in Weiner's Mayoral Announcement Video To hear him tell it as a newly declared candidate for mayor, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner was a force to be reckoned with on three of the most important issues to New Yorkers: public safety, affordable health insurance and treatment for rescue workers sickened at the site of the World Trade Center attack. "We can make a difference - if we're willing to fight for it," he says in his video announcement on YouTube. But while Mr. Weiner was known as a fighter, he was not so well known for making a difference. ON SCREEN Mr. Weiner is shown with his wife and baby; in a childhood snapshot with friends; and at news conferences as a congressman. These images alternate with shots of a Manhattan street, subways and bridges, houses and apartments, and mothers wheeling children in strollers. He addresses the camera outside his childhood home, his elementary school and a corner pizzeria, and is shown speaking with police officers, small-business owners, doctors and old people. The ad closes with his wife, Huma Abedin, smilingly at his side. ACCURACY Much of the video is devoted to reintroducing Mr. Weiner to New Yorkers as a product of a decidedly middle-class upbringing, as one of two working parents sharing responsibility for their son, and as someone concerned about the challenges facing middle-class New Yorkers today. But the video does highlight three elements of Mr. Weiner's Congressional record. In voice-over, for one, he boasts that "I got a billion dollars to put more cops on the beat." It is true that Mr. Weiner tried for years to revive a Clinton-era program that let local police departments apply for grants to hire more officers. The 2009 economic stimulus package contained $1 billion to do just that, although Mr. Weiner was not among its initial sponsors. But while viewers of the video might reasonably assume that at least some of those new officers were "on the beat" in New York, in fact the money bypassed the city in favor of places with higher crime rates and weaker economies. Mr. Weiner was left to express "outrage" that New York was "left out in the cold." Mr. Weiner next says he "fought to get sick 9/11 first responders the help they deserved." The legislation to pay for medical care for rescue workers sickened at the site of the World Trade Center attack took years to make it past Republican opposition. In the House, that push was led by Carolyn B. Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, both New York Democrats, and Peter T. King, a New York Republican. Mr. Weiner, while passionate, was not a major force in the deal making. "This thing took a lot of bipartisan effort, and that wasn't a hallmark of Anthony Weiner's," said Robert Livingston, a Republican lobbyist for trade center contractors. Indeed, Mr. Weiner drew enormous attention to the issue - and to himself - by erupting in a furious tirade against Mr. King that other New York Democrats saw as needlessly damaging to a delicate effort to line up Republican support. Finally, Mr. Weiner says he "led the campaign for real health reform that regular people can afford." Mr. Weiner did speak out for a single-payer, "Medicare-for-all" health care system, and was sharply critical of President Obama's decision not to pursue it. But this "campaign" was unsuccessful. Here again, Mr. Weiner's go-it-alone style in Congress - and his razor-sharp verbal bite - earned him hours of television airtime and a national following among liberals, but little else to show for it. SCORECARD The video works hard to soften Mr. Weiner's sharper edges, contain the radioactivity of his humiliating exit from politics a few years ago by referring to it only briefly in a higher-minded context, and make it easier for middle-class New Yorkers to relate to him - something that he would not have had to work so hard at a few years ago. Making the case that Mr. Weiner is the most qualified person to be the next mayor will apparently have to wait.