Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Pawlenty said he's appealing a finance board ruling that could spell crippling trouble for his campaign.

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The Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board announced Thursday afternoon its ruling that the state GOP and Pawlenty's campaign improperly coordinated a series a television ads that were then aired by the state Republican Party as an independent expenditure.

The board investigated the advertisements after the Independence Party filed a complaint as the ads, featuring Pawlenty talking into the camera in staged shots with pop-up windows of text around him, blanketed the airwaves for a week or more last month.

Ads paid for by third parties must have no coordination with political campaigns, yet that is exactly what happened with the ads designed to introduce Pawlenty to voters around the state, according to the board.

The six-member oversight panel voted 5-0 -- with one member out of town -- that there was direct coordination in the ads, and levied a blow to Pawlenty's campaign by ordering that the $800,000 ad cost be credited against Pawlenty's campaign spending limit of $2.2 million.

Combined with the spending of his campaign to this point, and if the ruling is upheld in state court, the Star Tribune reported Pawlenty may have "only few hundred thousand dollars to spend" as the campaign hits the last weeks.

Those are usually seen as crucial weeks in political campaigns, when candidates spend even more on advertising, events and paid staff.

The board also fined the Minnesota GOP party $4,000, and ordered a conciliation process that could cost the party millions of dollars more, the newspaper said.