Garak will try to eliminate all carts, for the safety of the alpha quadrant cars.

Well yes, you are correct in that at points in the past he wanted to. But I honestly felt that in 2020, he either thought his time for it had passed, or he wasn’t confident he was the best candidate to win. He mulled running for quite a while, and only really entered definitely when it was obvious there was really no other choice left for the DNC. But for a long time (too long really) nobody was even sure that he would run.

Not surprising, this is pretty much why he ran 4 years ago. He never wanted to be president, but his party had literally nobody (whom they would allow) that could step up and be a real contender.