Cowboys Owner’s Loan Boosts Daughter on Job

The 22-year-old daughter of new Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is making $60,000 a year as an aide to a congressman who lists a personal loan of at least $100,000 from Jones among his liabilities.

Less than a year out of Stanford, Charlotte Jones holds three titles on the staff of Rep. Tommy F. Robinson (D-Ark.).

Her father has been a friend of Robinson since childhood and a financial backer of the congressman’s political career. Jones became a multimillionaire in the insurance, oil and gas businesses.

In February, he purchased the Cowboys football franchise for an estimated $140 million.

According to Robinson’s 1987-88 financial disclosure form, he and Jones are partners in a farm in Arkansas. Robinson listed among his liabilities a personal loan from Jones of between $100,000 and $250,000.

Jones’ daughter said Monday that she does not know how much Robinson still owes her father but that monthly payments on the loan are being made.

She conceded that her father’s relationship with Robinson was instrumental in getting her a job on the congressman’s staff as a $31,000 constituent caseworker after graduating from Stanford last June with a degree in human biology.

Jones described her meteoric rise since then to the three-title position she now holds--administrative assistant, office manager and press secretary--as more of her own doing.

She said she tried to discourage Robinson from boosting her pay from $51,300 to $60,000 in March after raising it from $31,000 just two months earlier.

“I knew how it was going to come out in the media and cause him political damage, and I didn’t think it was worth it,” she said. “So I held it back for three weeks until he bantered he’d fire me if I didn’t put it through.”