@bunsenburner:
I am not a copyright attorney, but I have a lot of friends who are musicians, plus my son looked into it when he tried to start a small business of his own, and the copyright laws are not always that clear from everything I have been seen and told. If you notice, I wasn’t giving anyone advice on what to do, I simply was explaining what I have learned from my musician friends and people in the industry, plus my son’s experience (for example, there are different copyright laws for recorded performance, in the US it is like 1920 and before becomes public domain, in Europe and Canada is it later than that). Usually when artists work with rights agencies, according to my friend who has a band and is a songwriter, there usually is a blanket contract that covers licensing rights, so a politician could likely get a license from the licensing agency, for a mechanical license (recorded music) or for the right to have a band perform it or the rights to the music itself (the sheet music), and there are other nuances to it that are beyond my level. According to my music friends, very few people likely have right of refusal in their contracts, though a major performer might have the clout to negotiate something like that.
There was a stink years ago when ASCAP or BMI went after the girl scouts, with songs they were singing around the campfire, it was a major black eye and they backed down, among other things given the nature of the girl scouts and other non profit groups, it is pretty crappy to be claiming that is covered by the performing rights portion.