JD Vance is moving to a wealthy enclave outside D.C. Cue the gossip (and complaints).

MIDDLEBURG, Va. — No one in town has seen the new neighbors perusing the cucumbers at the Safeway, or dining on $98-an-ounce caviar at the restaurant down the street, or browsing the main drag’s array of well-appointed antique stores, one of them displaying a $4,600 gold-laden mirror fit for a palace.

For now, Vice President JD Vance is visible in the usual places, on television and social media, where powerful newsmakers are typically found.

But word that Vance and his wife, Usha, are making a second home in Middleburg is dominating local chatter, the focus of which is less about MAGA and more about him bringing too much Washington — motorcades, helicopters, Secret Service — to an old-money enclave that views itself as an escape from Washington.

“I can’t even paint my building without a permit — you’d think they would’ve had a town meeting to discuss it, but it just got dumped on us,” said Kenna Day, 35, a gift shop manager whose shoulder tattoo is the scripted French version of “Hell Is Other People.”

“I worry it will be disruptive to the calm we have here,” Day said. “It’s why people come. It’s like walking into a Hallmark card. We all get along so well.”

A couple of blocks away, Vladimir Maldonado, 24, a server at a Mexican restaurant owned by his family, said a patron had told him she had seen a caravan of 50 black SUVs in the area that she assumed was transporting the Vances to Middleburg.

“She said, ‘Did you hear about the vice president moving down the street?’” Maldonado said. “I was like, ‘That’s crazy!’” Serving chips and salsa to the country’s second-in-command, he said, would be a thrill even though he doesn’t agree with Vance or President Donald Trump on most issues.

“If he walks in here, I’d ask him so many questions, like tell me everything," he said. “His picture would definitely go on the wall.”

The White House did not respond to emails seeking confirmation of published reports that the Vances, who are expecting their fourth child later this month, are moving into a second residence at Wolver Hill Farm, a nearly 500-acre estate a mile from the Safeway on Middleburg’s main thoroughfare.

Chuck Kuhn, whose JK Moving Services has relocated presidents and vice presidents, including Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Trump, purchased the property six years ago for $8.5 million. Kuhn, reached on his cell phone, declined to answer whether the Vances are living at Wolver Hill, saying, “My formal comment is no comment.”

A person familiar with the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to talk about the matter, confirmed the vice president is leasing two of the farm’s four homes and said the Secret Service is expected to be a visible presence on the road leading to the property.

The Vances also reside at the vice president’s official residence, the U.S. Naval Observatory, in Northwest Washington. The mansion, on 12 acres that are part of the observatory compound, includes 33 rooms, a pool, and hot tub.

Set in Virginia’s rolling countryside an hour west of Washington, Middleburg has one traffic light and roughly 750 residents, a majority of whom voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The town is known for horseback riding and hunting, fences made of stacked stone and long winding driveways leading to multimillion-dollar homes.

It is a world away from the hardscrabble Appalachian life Vance chronicled in his best-selling Hillbilly Elegy memoir.

At any given time, an array of dignitaries — senators, congressional leaders, diplomats — can be spotted window shopping on Washington Street, Middleburg’s main commercial corridor, where decorative lawn jockeys stand sentry outside a few businesses. The well-heeled can also be found at the Salamander Resort, next door to Wolver Hill, where suites go for as much as $1,100 a night.

Over the years, at least four presidents have owned homes or visited the town, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Obama. The Kennedys built a home in Middleburg in the early 1960s, a 167-acre estate they called Wexford that Jackie Kennedy sold after the president’s death, though she still visited after leaving the White House to ride horses with her children. Elizabeth Taylor and her husband Sen. John Warner lived in Middleburg until their divorce. Robert Duvall resided on a 360-acre farm in the area for several decades until his death earlier this year. In April, Queen Camilla visited a horse farm in town during King Charles III’s trip to the United States.

Trowbridge Littleton, the town’s $400-a-month part-time mayor whose family’s local roots stretch back eight generations, said he had no firsthand knowledge of the Vances’ move to Middleburg, though he did see a cluster of black SUVs on the road leading to Wolver Hill the other day.

Middleburg’s residents and seven-member police force, the mayor said, are accustomed to famous names coming and going, and predicted that the Vances would not disrupt life. “Everyone is welcome. We’re an open and friendly community, and we’ll manage it,” he said.

Punkin Lee, 80, the owner of Journeymen Saddlers, a leather repair shop, has lived in Middleburg her entire life and can recall when Jackie Kennedy came into her place “and waited her turn, no different than anyone else.”

“A lot of celebrities who have friends here come and visit, then you hear about it when you run into someone at the post office a couple of weeks later and they’ll say, ‘Did you see so and so?’” Lee said. “They came and went, and it was all quiet and nice.”

The vice president and his family may be another matter, though, given his security detail and entourage, she said. “I don’t see how it can’t be different,” she said. “I haven’t seen them, and I don’t need to see them.”

A place where residents have vented about the potential disruption is a private Facebook page known as “Middleburg Uncensored,” which became fodder for a recent Daily Beast article headlined, “Vance’s New Neighbors Rage as VP Brings Chaos to Horse Country.”

Carol Henson, 81, a bookkeeper who has lived on the edge of town for more than three decades, was among those who complained about what she characterized as the “vile daily upset” the vice president would cause “our lovely little burg.”

Henson, in a phone interview, said the “inconvenience is not what this is really about.” Referring to Trump’s policies, she said, “It’s just awful what they have been doing.” She described the vice president as “abhorrent.”

“People don’t want to be mean,” she said of town residents. “They don’t want to be mean to outsiders. But there’s a big difference between JD Vance and Robert Duvall.”

Where some in town see the Vances as a reason to rage, Christian Puccio, owner of an Italian restaurant, envisions opportunity.

“For them to be out here is pretty cool,” said Puccio, who opened the Oak and Ember Tasting Room and Market six months ago just outside town. “If they’re around, I’d say come over. It would be cool to have anyone from public office in here. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. The guy is helping to run the country.”

A computer repairperson, a guy everyone knows as Gomer Pyles (his birth name is Dennis), said he sees Vance’s presence as possibly catalyzing a different sort of opportunity.

“If he comes into a restaurant, and we can talk to him, maybe he will change his ways,” said Pyles, 74, who moved to the area from California in 1981. “You can attack it, but you can also say, ‘What can I do to make this a benefit?’ I see it as an opportunity for change.”

The change that Chris Gore, a retired CIA analyst, has observed in recent days is that his social circle has a fresh subject to enliven their cocktail hour.

An 18-year resident who has voted for Republicans and Democrats, Gore said he listens “more than I talk” as his friends fret that Vance’s arrival will link Middleburg to Trump.

The one consolation in Vance’s choice of real estate, Gore said, is that he’s renting. “That’s a relief,” he said. “If he bought, then we’d have to deal with him indefinitely.”