Gomez says he’ll win without Washington help

{mosads}“I’m my own person and I’m going to win this election with or without D.C.,” he said at a press conference on Monday, according to the Boston Globe.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser for the Gomez Victory Fund later this month, the Globe reported. And a PAC affiliated with former GOP presidential nominee Newt Gingrich contributed $5,000 to Gomez’s campaign this week.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, too, has launched Web videos hammering Gomez’s Democratic opponent in the special election to replace Secretary of State John Kerry (D), Rep. Edward Markey.

But Gomez will need to convince Massachusetts voters that he can serve independently of the national GOP, as President Obama remains popular in the state after winning Massachusetts with more than 60 percent of the vote in 2012.

And tying the national GOP around former Sen. Scott Brown’s (R) neck helped Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) defeat him in 2012.

Indeed, Gingrich himself advised Gomez in the Boston Herald to “run as a Navy SEAL and not as a Republican candidate.”

Part of Gomez’s main pitch to voters is that he’s an independent outsider running against a creature of Washington who has served nearly four decades in Congress. Help from Republicans in Washington could undermine that narrative.

Gingrich admitted that support from “someone like me is a two-edged sword,” and that he believes the Gomez campaign would “rather Markey get all the Washington money.”

Markey doesn’t face a similar conundrum in the blue-leaning state, and a number of big-name Massachusetts and national Democrats — including Warren and first lady Michelle Obama — are campaigning for the candidate.