JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A top Alaska election official on Monday ruled that a U.S. Senate candidate with the same name and party affiliation as Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan is ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot in August.

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, in a letter sent to the challenger Sullivan, said she concluded that his declaration of candidacy “was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”

The challenger can appeal the ruling, she said.

A message seeking comment from Sullivan, the challenger, was not immediately returned. In a social media post Sunday, he said he “met the qualification and I entered this race because I am unhappy with the 12 year record of the current Senator and I feel we need a change. It’s that simple.”

It’s been a whirlwind chain of events in one of the nation’s most prominent U.S. Senate races, one both parties consider crucial to controlling the chamber.

The kerfuffle was set off by the challenger Sullivan filing days before the June 1 candidate deadline. Sen. Sullivan and Republicans called the challenger a “sham” candidate who was working with Democrats to boost Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola’s chances in the race. Both the challenger Sullivan and Peltola’s campaign denied the allegation.

Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom a week ago announced an investigation into the challenger Sullivan’s run, citing “credible allegations” that he declared his candidacy “in coordination with another candidate and campaign” with an intent to confuse and “manipulate” voters.

Sullivan, a retired teacher from the small, southeast Alaska fishing community of Petersburg, has said he’s done nothing wrong and insisted that Dahlstrom lacks a legal basis to exclude him from the ballot. He said in a recent interview that he has been weighing a run for years but decided to try now because he is unhappy with the status quo. He called sharing a name with Sullivan a “matter of fate.”

“The Lieutenant Governor’s job is to oversee elections fairly and impartially,” he said in a statement last week. “Instead, her actions create the impression that the state government is being used to protect an incumbent senator from facing competition at the ballot box.”

Becky Bohrer, The Associated Press