[1] A native of Baton Rouge,[2][3] Spencer was married in 1917 in an Episcopal ceremony to the former Rosa Vertner Sevier (1891–1978), originally from Kosciusko, Mississippi.
He had worked with other representatives, including Cecil Morgan of Shreveport and Ralph Norman Bauer of Franklin, to secure impeachment charges against Long, which were blocked in the state senate.
Long vowed to break the back of what was called the "Old Order" or sometimes the "Bourbons", the delta cotton planters, the sugar growers of South Louisiana, and the New Orleans city machine.
[8] Spencer withdrew and endorsed the anti-Long factional candidate, Cleveland Dear of Alexandria,[13] but victory went to the Longite choice, Richard Leche of New Orleans, with Earl Kemp Long for lieutenant governor.
[8] In 1932, Spencer, a sportsman armed with a hunting permit, shot a rare ivory-billed woodpecker along the Tensas River on a large tract of swamp forest land owned by the Singer Sewing Company.
Senator Allen J. Ellender, Huey Long's permanent successor, to work for the establishment of the proposed Tensas Swamp National Park to preserve sixty thousand acres of Singer-owned lands.
[16] In 1940, Spencer was an at-large delegate to the Democratic National Convention which nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt to a third term, with Henry A. Wallace for vice president.
His fellow delegates included newly inaugurated Governor Sam Houston Jones, a leader of the anti-Long faction, and U.S. Representative Charles E. McKenzie of Louisiana's 5th congressional district.