COEUR d'ALENE - He has been talking about it for a couple of years now, but just last week Larry Spencer decided to just do it.

Last week after two prominent Democrats decided to publicly announce their plans to cross over and vote in the closed Republican primary, Spencer fielded 10 precinct committee candidates to take over the Kootenai County Democratic Central Committee.

"The traditional Democrats had 11 people who filed for precinct seats as of the Friday deadline," Spencer said in an interview Tuesday. "Of the ones who we actually got in on time (before the filing deadline), I think we got 10, but there will be more of them soon."

Spencer, a longtime Republican who has filed as a Democratic candidate for county assessor, said he will be working to get write-in candidates to file for the remaining 59 open seats on the Democratic central committee. He expects the Democrats will do the same.

"I want to make it clear that we might not be able to support the current platform, but in the past they have had some pretty good platforms," he said, adding that his group may decide to make some changes to the local platform if they can secure a majority of the central committee seats. "They had a pretty good platform in 1892."

Spencer said the Democrats have given up on their party and started voting in the Republican primary rather than fielding their own candidates to run in the general elections.

"That strikes me as a cop-out," he said, explaining that with a little work the Democrats could get their candidates elected, but instead they are simply meddling in the Republican Party. "As evidenced by the fact that Dan English kept getting re-elected here.

"Why don't they focus on strengthening their party rather than invading the Republican Party?" he added. "They are competitive."

He said the Democrats are vulnerable otherwise because the Republican primary is a closed election, but anyone can vote in the Democratic primary including constitutionalist, libertarians, unaffiliated independents and even Republicans.

"That is part of the strategy here," he said. "A person who is unhappy with the way their party is going or fed up with the two-party system can vote in the Democrat Party.

"There will be some very competitive races."

He said he has quite a few people contacting him to become a part of the takeover, but he is not naive. Spencer said the Democrats have a base of about 1,300 primary voters which gives them an advantage in the primaries.

"I suspect they will probably run a write-in candidate against me," he said. "And that, they could probably succeed at, but I haven't heard anything about that yet."

The people who are involved with Spencer are not necessarily involved in the Republican, Libertarian or Constitution Parties. If there is one defining label you can give them all it is "conservative," he said.

Spencer said it's not that big of a stretch to consider himself a Democrat. He points to Benewah County Commissioner Jack Buell, who some would say is not a Democrat.

"There are some people who don't fit very well in any of the established parties," he said. "Look at Jack Buell. Some of the Democrats don't like him, but Jack Buell considers himself a Democrat, and he is a Democrat.

"If there is a Walt Minnick Democrat, Buell would probably be a few steps to the right of him."

He said Gordy Ormesher, who is running as a Democrat for county treasurer, is affiliated with the AFL/CIO Union, and builds electric cars for a living.

Spencer said the bottom line is that the existing leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to field competitive candidates, so he wants to step in and field his own.

"When their only idea is 'let's go join the other party,' then you got to say 'wait a minute,'" Spencer said. "When I saw that they weren't fielding but a handful of candidates, I said 'well, let's give the voters a choice this fall.'"