Rick Beard is a Nebraska business owner based in Omaha whose career spans food, wine retail and cannabis cultivation. He founded the Omaha Wine Company in 1995 and later owned and operated a wine store in California's Napa Valley for 19 years. In 2019, he moved to Norman, Oklahoma, to help his family establish a licensed cannabis farm before returning to Nebraska. Beard is the Legal Marijuana Now Party's candidate for governor of Nebraska in 2026.
DI has documented statements by Rick Beard on 2026 Midterm Elections, Law Enforcement, and License-Plate Surveillance, among other topics. Read the quotations, original sources and related cases below.
Role at the time: Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate for governor of Nebraska, in an emailed statement
Condemned
Statement summary
In an emailed statement, Beard said he would rather the state spend money fixing potholes than on cameras that watch drivers, and that Flock cameras need to be voter approved or taken down.
“I would rather have the state spend money on fixing the damn potholes instead of spending money to watch us drive over them. Flock cameras need to be voter approved or taken down.”
Read the full email
Sorry for my late reply.....
I would rather have the state spend money on fixing the damn potholes instead of spending money to watch us drive over them. Flock cameras need to be voter approved or taken down.
Thanks,
Rick Beard
R
Emailed statement from Rick Beard to Dispute Index on Flock license-plate cameras · Rick BeardEmailed statement from Rick Beard, October 17, 2026 (UTC).
Why we used this label
Relative to whether networked license-plate surveillance should exist, Beard objects to the state spending money on cameras that watch drivers and says Flock cameras need to be voter approved or taken down, so we labeled it Condemned. On the remedy ladder this is Guardrails, the milder of the two remedies he names, because voter approval would let communities keep the cameras.
Networked automated license-plate cameras can assemble searchable records of vehicle movements. Candidates and officials disagree over whether to ban the systems, keep them with limits, or defend them as investigative tools. This tracker separates outright bans from narrower restrictions.
