When they weren't attending school, both Cliff and his younger brother, Herbert M. Jones, worked on the construction of Boulder Dam in the 1930s, working their way up from servers at the Anderson mess hall to various jobs including mucker, puddler, signalman, crane operator and power hose operator.

This qualified Cliff to sit for the Nevada bar exam during his final semester of law school.

In 1946, Cliff ran for and was elected the State's Lieutenant Governor, an office he held for two terms, from January 1947 to December 1954, when a scandal forced his resignation.

Cliff was a highly successful politician with wide ranging interests and influence during these years.

At various times he had been given interests in casinos by people he had helped, including the El Cortez, the Algiers Hotel, The Dunes, Golden Nugget, Pioneer, Thunderbird and Westerner, plus international properties in France, Lebanon and Ecuador.

The scandal that caused him to retire from political office is discussed in Chapter VII of “The Green Felt Jungle” (1963).

Denton, Ralph, A Liberal Conscience, From Interviews with Michael S. Green, University of Nevada Las Vegas Oral History Program, 2001.

State Law Resources, Inc. (On-line document), History of Jones Vargas, November 1, 2007.