NATCHEZ — Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten posted a video on social media Thursday morning to address voters who may have received a campaign flier in the mail or via social media that he called a smear campaign against him.

“This is nothing new for campaigning or tactics,” Patten said in the video. “I mean it is not anything new to me. Since I ran in 2015 I’ve had to face all types of criticism, all types of insults and just people just trying to attack. This type of hatred and bigotry doesn’t have a place here in this community, nor does it have a place in politics. I’m not going to address one single rumor on there. What I am going to do is denounce those kinds of actions against me or anybody else.”

Patten said he first saw the campaign flier on Monday when a friend shared pictures of both sides of the flier via social media.

The front of the card reads, “Beware of False Prophets!” in a bold headline.

The back of the flier, which is printed on card stock, bears a picture of Patten next to bullet points of some 17 allegations questioning Patten’s integrity.

The original card being circulated on social media and shared with Patten, had a handwritten postal label attached to the front bearing the mailing address and name of Natchez businessman Kevin Wilson.

The card did not have a postage stamp on it, but it does exhibit a postal bar code on the bottom, indicating it had passed through a postal facility in Jackson, Natchez Postmaster Kevin McNair confirmed.

Despite the card circulating on social media before Tuesday’s primary, however, Patten still won more than 77% of the vote against two Democratic challengers, Jerry Ford and Tom Grennell.

On Wednesday, however, the day after the primary, many of the cards began to arrive in people’s mailboxes.

“What happened is so many of my constituents called and texted, inboxed me and brought those things to the sheriff’s office,” Patten said. “They were just upset at the fact that it is just a continued smear campaign being run against me. They wanted me to be aware of it — that somebody had done these mail outs.”

On Thursday, Patten said he decided to address it on social media.

“I just said, let me go ahead and address it on social media so people can know that I’m aware of it,” Patten said.

Wilson said Thursday afternoon that he had heard from friends that a picture of the campaign card addressed to him and bearing his address had been circulating on social media but he had not yet seen a copy of it.

When provided a copy of the card, Wilson said, “It looks like a third-grader wrote that,” of the handwritten mailing label with his name and address on it. “Where is the postage stamp at?”

Wilson said he never received the card and that he had no idea how someone would have gotten a piece of mail that had been addressed to him.

“I’m looking at that sticker on there and I swear it looks like a third grader wrote it,” Wilson said.

Wilson asked if the handwriting matched other versions of the card that had been sent through the mail and, indeed, the handwriting on the card with his address and name appeared to be written by a different hand than others that had handwritten mailing labels and first-class postage stamps affixed.

Wilson denied having any involvement in creating or mailing the campaign cards smearing Patten.

McNair said he had seen some 200 to 300 of the cards come through the Natchez United States Post Office this week, some before Tuesday’s election but many on Wednesday.

“They put a first class stamp on them,” McNair said. “They mailed them. There is just no way to tell where they mailed it from because it is a first-class stamp. If it had been metered … they knew what they were doing.”

McNair said the bar code across the bottom indicated the mail outs had gone through the Jackson postal facility but any piece of first class mail regardless of from where it originated would go through the Jackson facility, even if it were originally dropped off at the Natchez Post office.

“They could have gone and dropped them off in Texas,” McNair said. “I didn’t get some of them until yesterday on Aug. 7. … What I’m thinking, the way I got them, I’m thinking that they dropped them in some blue boxes along the line. That’s what I think.”

Meanwhile, Patten still faces two independent challengers, Brian Seyfarth and Adam Kirk, in the Nov. 5 general election.