The presidential race is on its way to California, and the signs are here for all to see — literally.

The California Nurses Association, one of the biggest players in state Democratic politics, is going big this week with Bernie Sanders billboards in the Bay Area.

The union gave Sanders his first national endorsement in August, when the senator from Vermont was just starting his campaign.

“We started it here, and we plan to conclude it here,” said California Nurses Association Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro.

There are five Bernie billboards up in San Francisco and Oakland, including on one of the large digital displays at the eastern end of the Bay Bridge.

The nurses union has been big for Bernie in other ways as well. Two thousand California nurses have hit the campaign trail for Sanders nationally, and “they will be coming back to organize here,” DeMoro said.

It’s an indication of one of the many ways in which 2016 is turning out to be a strange year in politics — when’s the last time anyone can remember a meaningful presidential primary in California?

This time, both Democrats and Republicans are likely to have something to say about their party’s nominee on election day June 7.

“It’s kind of amazing having political billboards in California,” said Alec Bash, an organizer with the Hillary Clinton campaign in Northern California. “It’s kind of a good thing — there is a lot of enthusiasm out there.”

The Clinton machine is revving up as well, with former President Bill Clinton scheduled to campaign for his wife at a Los Angeles community college Sunday.

“The campaign is being very strategic, so right now they don’t have as much money to spend in California as Bernie’s people,” Bash said. But he added that people can expect to start seeing a lot more Clinton supporter tables at farmers’ markets, street fairs and the like throughout Northern California.

Clinton beat Barack Obama by eight points in the 2008 California primary, and a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll gave her a seven-point lead over Sanders among Democratic voters this time. The Sanders people, however, think they’re on a roll.

“I know that the national press is saying that this is over,” DeMoro said. “It isn’t.”

UC sales: One of the more interesting footnotes in the recent state auditor’s report on University of California admissions was the extent to which the booming enrollment in out-of-state students is funding campuses.

UC began allowing campuses to keep out-of-state tuition money in 2008. Systemwide, the amount that campuses spent on recruitment promptly shot up: It was $900,000 in 2010, and by 2014 it was $4.5 million.

That was a good investment, considering that out-of-state students’ tuition totaled $728 million in fiscal 2014 — more than double the $325 million of three years earlier.

With that kind of sales record, if UC issued stock, we’d all be buying.

Inside play: Nothing like a gun to the head to get things going — just ask the lawmakers in Sacramento who finally got a long-stalled minimum wage increase passed last week.

For the past two years, state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, had been been working to raise the minimum wage from the current $10 an hour to $13 by 2017 — only to have his bills bottled up in various committees. Gov. Jerry Brown, worried about costs to the state when the economy inevitably slows down, was no fan of the idea.

Enter the Service Employees International Union and United Healthcare Workers West, each of which ponied up millions of dollars to qualify ballot initiatives to increase the wage.

The health care union’s version, boosting the minimum to $15 an hour by 2021, had already qualified for the November ballot. The SEIU initiative, which would have gotten the wage to $15 by 2020, seemed likely to qualify. An EMC Research poll of 1,000 voters statewide showed both measures had broad support.

Faster than you can say, “Let’s make a deal,” Brown reached an accommodation with labor and the Legislature for a gradual increase to $15 an hour by 2022. As a kicker, 460,000 in-home health workers will get three paid sick days a year, like all other state workers.

With only a slight nod to the estimated $3.6 billion a year in added cost to state government, Democrats pushed the raise to the finish line. The lone concession to Brown was a provision giving the governor the power to cancel a raise during hard times.

“The governor wasn’t happy about it,” said one adviser, asking for anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak for Brown. “But he is a wily enough politician to know that the train was rolling, and he could either get run over by it or hop on board and toot the whistle.”

As for the gun-to-the-head politics, Leno said, “When an idea’s time has come, there is no stopping it.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross