Tenured people carry it out, but in my experience, the goal tends to be for their students/subordinates/group colleagues/etc. to achieve tenure instead of others.
I've heard of an engineering faculty where there was basically a cold war between a few of the tenured profs. They would do everything they could to undercut or screw each other over. Pure spite-based politics. Toxic as hell and there was very little anyone could do about out.
i know of prestigious departments where after literally decades of political stalemate with colleagues (over things as petty as who gets what office) prestigious faculty finally managed to finagle a high-dollar offer from a lower tier institution and de-camped over the politics.
