Andrés Ojeda

Andrés Ojeda Spitz (born 5 January 1984) is a Uruguayan lawyer, television personality and politician of the Colorado Party. On June 30, 2024, he won the Colorado Party presidential primary and was elected the party's candidate for president of Uruguay in the 2024 Uruguayan general election.

Ojeda was born in Montevideo and obtained a law degree from the University of the Republic. He specialized in criminal law, and gained wide public recognition as a criminal defense attorney and television pundit. He began his political career in 2010 and focused on Montevideo politics, as a member of the department's legislature from 2010 to 2015, and as a candidate for substitute departamental Intendant in 2020.

In 2023 after speculation, he confirmed his move to national politics by announcing his candidacy for president for the 2024 Colorado Party primary election.

Early life and education
Ojeda was born in Montevideo, the son of Luis Enrique Ojeda and Patricia Spitz. He is of Irish and German descent; his paternal great-great-grandfather was an Irish national who came to Uruguay to work on the railroad, while his maternal grandfather was a German lawyer.

He attended La Mennais School in the Punta Gorda neighborhood. In his childhood he was part of the Scout Movement. In 2002 he enrolled at the University of the Republic from which he graduated as a lawyer. He subsequently obtained a postgraduate degree in Economic Criminal Law from the University of Montevideo and in 2018 a diploma in oral criminal litigation from the American University Washington College of Law. In 2022 he completed a master's degree in criminal law from the Austral University in Buenos Aires.

Career
Ojeda gained notoriety when he was hired in 2015 as a defense attorney of the former Tupamaro guerrilla fighter and deserter Héctor Amodio Pérez. Since then he has been a television pundit and legal columnist in El País newspaper. He also serves as an attorney for the police union.

Ojeda runs his own law firm, Andres Ojeda Abogados, which has been rated "excellent" in the white-collar crime dispute resolution category by Paris-based consulting firm Leaders League.

Political career
During his time at the university, Ojeda was part of Foro Universitario, a student union with a Batllist ideology. In 2002, after attending an event that had Julio María Sanguinetti as the main speaker, he decided to join the Colorado Party.

In the 2010 municipal election he was elected member of the Montevideo legislature for the period 2010–2015. He later joined Ciudadanos, a faction led by Ernesto Talvi. In the 2020 municipal election he was Laura Raffo's first substitute for the position of Intendant of Montevideo as representative of the Colorado Party in the Coalición Multicolor. Raffo was the individual candidate with the most votes, but she was not elected due to the double simultaneous voting system.

Since 2021, Ojeda began to be considered as a possible candidate in the 2024 Colorado Party presidential primaries, as a figure of generational change for the party. He finally announced his pre-candidacy on November 11, 2023. In mid-November, he was polling at about 4% in national Colorado primary opinion polls, according to Equipo Consultores.

Personal life
Ojeda married model, actress and television personality Natalie Yoffe in October 2017 after two years of relationship. Prominent personalities from politics and entertainment were invited to the ceremony. In April 2023, the couple divorced, after separating permanently the previous year.