By Valerie Cury

Leesburg District Supervisor Kristen Umstattd (D-Leesburg) has announced that she will not seek reelection in 2027, setting an end date to a public-service career that has been intertwined with Leesburg for more than three decades.

When Umstattd completes her current term on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 31, 2027, she will have served the people of Leesburg in elected office across four decades—as a Town Council member, mayor and county supervisor.

“When my current term ends at the end of December of 2027, it will have been my joy and honor to have served the people of Leesburg for 36 years,” Umstattd wrote in announcing her decision Aug. 29.

For longtime Leesburg residents, it is difficult to remember a period of Town government without her.

Umstattd was first elected to the Leesburg Town Council in 1992. She later served as vice mayor before becoming mayor in 2002, leading the Town during a period when Leesburg underwent extraordinary growth and change.

During her years as mayor, Leesburg’s population grew from approximately 30,000 to 50,000. The Town expanded its water and wastewater facilities, major portions of Battlefield Parkway were completed, and the Sycolin Road flyover was constructed over the Route 7/15 Bypass. Community traditions also grew during those years, including Acoustic on the Green and renewed Memorial Day and Sept. 11 observances.

But Umstattd’s years in office have also been marked by something less easily measured in capital projects and population figures: longevity in a community where local government is often intensely personal.

In 2016, as she left Town government for the Board of Supervisors, the Virginia General Assembly formally commended Umstattd for her service to Leesburg. The resolution described a public official known for walking through neighborhoods, helping residents and businesses address individual problems and paying close attention to constituent concerns.

Her service to Leesburg did not end when she left Town Hall.

Umstattd was elected to represent the Leesburg District on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in November 2015 and took office in 2016. Voters returned her to the Board in 2019 and again in 2023.

By the time her current term ends, Umstattd will have spent more than a decade representing Leesburg at the county level after more than two decades helping govern the Town itself.

Her announcement comes unusually early—more than a year before the 2027 election—but gives potential candidates time to understand the office they may seek and the community they hope to represent.

It also gives the many residents Umstattd appointed to County boards, commissions and committees time to consider continuing their own public service after she leaves office.

Umstattd made clear that although she is preparing to step away from elected office, her affection for the community she has represented has not diminished.

“The Leesburg District is the best district in the County,” she wrote. “You know it. I know it. Anyone who says otherwise is blowing smoke.”

It is a characteristically playful line at the end of a consequential announcement.

Umstattd and her husband, Charles Moss, moved to Leesburg in 1987 and have practiced law together in the community for decades. Before settling in Leesburg, she served in the U.S. Naval Reserve and later worked as a Soviet naval analyst for the CIA.

Five years after arriving in Leesburg, she won her first election to Town Council.

Thirty-five years after that first election, she will leave the Board of Supervisors.

Between those two points is a public career that has spanned Leesburg’s transformation from a much smaller town into the county seat of one of the continuing fastest-growing counties in the nation.

Her announcement marks something larger than the beginning of another local election.

It marks the approaching end of an era in Leesburg government.

For Umstattd, however, the years appear to be measured less by offices held than by the people she has had the opportunity to represent.

She called serving them her “joy and honor”—and she still insists they live in the best district in Loudoun County.