There’s a movement afoot to draft State Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale to run against fellow Republican Congressman Spencer Bachus. But those behind the movement are staying quiet, and the senator himself will not confirm or deny rumors that he might run.

Word of the movement began last week when area residents began receiving automated telephone calls, with a recorded voice asking who they would support in the 2012 election for Bachus’ House seat. Two options were given, Bachus or Beason.

In addition, a Facebook page titled “Draft Scott Beason for Congress” was set up on or before Dec. 8, the date that the first message on the page was posted. On the page, links to articles about both Beason and Bachus are posted, as well as messages from those who support the draft movement.

Beason, reached for comment by The North Jefferson News on Tuesday afternoon, would not say if he or anyone working on his behalf was behind the poll, nor whether he was seriously considering running against Bachus.

“I’m in a position now of looking at all the different possibilities,” Beason said. “We will be making a decision in the near future.”

That near future will necessarily be on or before Jan. 13, which is the filing deadline for the Republican primary.

The name of the administrator of the Facebook page is blocked, which is an option available to users who set up “like” pages for anything from celebrity fan pages and such to politicians, causes and businesses. An email address is listed on the page, but repeated messages sent by The North Jefferson News and other media organizations to that address have gone unanswered.

Both Bachus and Beason have been under intense scrutiny in recent months for widely varying reasons.

Bachus is the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, one of that body’s most powerful committees. He took over that position from Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., when the majority in the House went from Democrat to Republican after the 2010 elections. Bachus was ranking member of the committee when Frank was chairman under the Democrat majority prior to the switch.

Bachus came under fire for what critics claimed was insider trading — using information he gained as ranking member to trade stocks and options. The claims came largely from a book written by Peter Schweizer, a one-time speechwriter for former Alaska Governor and GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. The book, “Throw Them All Out,” alleged that Bachus improperly acted on information about the coming economic downturn from a briefing by Federal reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority leader John Boehner, R-Ohio and Pelosi’s successor as speaker, were accused of similar improprieties in the book.

Additional allegations came in a report on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”

Bachus, from Vestavia Hills, vigorously denied the allegations, saying that the information about the downturn was public knowledge. Bachus also said he never traded stocks or options on financial-services companies. He has since stopped trading altogether, according to his press spokesman.

Beason has spent much of the past year in the headlines in Alabama, largely because of two separate events: His sponsorship of the controversial state immigration law, and his testimony in the federal trial involving corruption in the state legislature regarding gambling.

Beason wore a concealed recording device during the legislative session, in which he recorded fellow members talking about possible bribes for favorable votes in the effort to legalize electronic bingo. During that time, Beason was recorded referring to the largely-African American customer base of the Greenetrack greyhound track and electronic bingo parlor as “aborigines.”

Beason later apologized for the comment in a press conference at the Gardendale Civic Center. Nonetheless, the State Senate GOP leadership voted to remove Beason as the chairman of the Rules Committee, the most powerful committee in the Senate.

In an interview for the Winter 2011 edition of Vision, the North Jefferson News quarterly magazine, Beason was asked if he would consider running for Bachus’ seat. (The news of the allegations against Bachus had broken two days before the interview.) Beason said, “If there were an open seat in Congress, it’s possible I might look at it. But you just never know. You never say no to any possibilities. We’ll see what happens.”

Neither Bachus nor a spokesman were available for comment.