State Sen. Scott Beason says the chances of him entering the race to fill the open Sixth District Congressional seat are slim.

“I am 95 percent sure I’m running for re-election in the Senate,” Beason told The North Jefferson News on Tuesday night, after his appearance at a meeting of Mt. Olive residents opposed to an effort to annex part of the community into neighboring Gardendale.

“I’m still looking at AL-6 and having some meetings, but that is a big undertaking and I’ve been praying about it,” he said.

Beason ran for the seat in 2012 as a primary opponent to incumbent Rep. Spencer Bachus. He was the top vote-getter among a handful of challengers, but Bachus easily won the race and the subsequent general election. Since then, Bachus has announced he will not run again in 2014.

The primary field is not as large as first thought, with several possible candidates taking a pass on the race. So far, the best-known declared candidate is Paul DeMarco, a state representative from Homewood. Other declared candidates include Harbert Corporation executive Will Brooke, Alabama Policy Institute founder Gary Palmer, surgeon Dr. Chad Mathis of Indian Springs Village, and Pelham businessman Tom Vignuelle, who announced his candidacy on Tuesday morning.

Beason thinks he would fare well against that field, if he decided to run.

“My numbers look really good in AL-6,” he said, “but you’d have to go to Washington four days a week, and I have young kids. Washington is messed up and I would love to go help fix the problem, but I just don’t know if I’ve been called to do that.”

Beason is a well-known political figure in the state, though not always for reasons flattering to him. He was the star witness for federal prosecutors in their 2011 trial of several state legislators over charges of vote-buying by those who wanted to legalize electronic-bingo gambling. He wore a concealed recording device during the investigation, during which he was recorded describing voters in mostly-black legislative districts as “aborigines,” a term usually applied to native peoples of the Australian bush lands.

Despite that, Beason has enjoyed widespread support in his heavily-conservative district, usually aligning himself with the Tea Party movement.

Though he’s not happy with the current state affairs in the nation’s capital, Beason said he isn’t sure he wants to deal with the process that bogs the system down.

“I’m almost ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Montgomery’ now,” he said, referring to the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” about a freshman senator who rails against the political process. “I do think some things have to fundamentally change there, and we need to have some people who are willing to stand up. I think my record proves that I’m willing to stand up and I’m willing to tell people what I believe, whether they’re mad at me or not.”

Beason did not say when he would make his final decision on entering the race.

[Edited at 6:15 a.m. Jan. 9 to add Tom Vignuelle to the list of announced candidates.]