After Winning Office Comes the Actual Office : Government: O.C. Reps.-elect Edward Royce and Jay Kim get Capitol Hill space. They fare better with committee assignments.

Inside the ornate Cannon Caucus Room, clerks doled out the cold leftovers to 110 freshman members of the House who had come Wednesday to claim office assignments for the 103rd Congress.

Like a tired Bingo announcer, a House staffer called out the number each new member had chosen earlier in a marathon lottery. Then the novice representatives rose to choose among the picked-over office suites and scurried off to select carpet and pick out office equipment.

Outside the gilded chamber, Rep.-elect Edward R. Royce (R-Fullerton), one of Orange County’s two new members of Congress, reflected on his first two weeks in Washington, and the conflicts between setting up shop and shaking up an institution.

The election of new members to nearly a quarter of the 435 seats in the House “is a mandate for change,” said Royce, 41, who represented Orange County in the state Senate for 10 years. “So the question is, ‘How do we get the leverage to force that change?’ ”

But even as new members were wrestling with plans to gain influence on important committees and limit the power of entrenched chairmen, they were equally occupied with the nuts and bolts of life on Capitol Hill--things like securing an office and winning reelection.

“The part of it that’s discouraging, of course, is when we focus more on our committee assignments, and how we’re going to get those assignments, than we do on what we came here to change,” Royce said. “We’re all guilty of it.”

Equally disillusioned with some of the Capitol mores was Rep.-elect Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar), who represents Yorba Linda and adjacent parts of Orange County. Kim recalled a discussion of committee assignments during which one seasoned member suggested that he seek a seat on a powerful committee such as Appropriations or Ways and Means.

“He told me it would be easy to receive $100,000, $200,000 (in) donations,” said Kim, 53. “But if you serve on a committee like Post Office, you’re lucky to get 100 bucks. This was in (freshman) orientation.”

For the most part, Royce said, he is pleased that the 63 Democrats and 47 Republicans who make up the Class of ’92 already have moved to reshape Congress, even though they will not be sworn in as members until Jan. 5.

Among other things, new members won the right to serve on powerful committees, including Appropriations and Ways and Means, that in the past had been closed to freshmen. Republicans, meanwhile, took steps to limit the influence of their party’s senior “ranking members” on committees. The full House is likely to consider limiting the terms of the committee chairmen, all members of the Democratic majority, after the 103rd Congress convenes next month.

But there is much more to be done, according to both congressmen-elect.

“I believe the separation of powers, the checks and balances, that system is out of kilter,” Royce said, noting that Congress in the last two decades has steadily eroded the power of the President to limit federal spending.

Even though President-elect Bill Clinton is a Democrat, Royce said he suspects that freshmen of both parties will work to give Clinton such deficit-taming powers as the line-item veto.

“I think the focus is on cooperating with the President,” Royce said in an earlier interview, “ . . . Working with the new chief executive to restore his rights . . . (and in the process) diminish the power of the Democratic leadership in the House.”

Said Kim: “We (are) going to be playing a major role.”

On the nuts-and-bolts front, Orange County’s two new representatives fared better in securing key committee assignments than they did prime office space.

Royce will serve on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which keeps an eye on the nation’s foreign policy, and the Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Although the House Judiciary Committee was his first choice, Royce said he is eager to tackle the foreign assignment.

The former state senator was equally enthusiastic about the science panel, chaired by fellow California Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton). The committee is expected to be a prime force in developing policy to help the nation’s struggling aerospace industry, based largely in Southern California.

Among the aerospace companies whose home is Orange County are Rockwell International Corp. in Seal Beach, and McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co. in Huntington Beach.

Kim, a civil engineer who heads a company worth at least $4 million, will be a member of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, as well as the Committee on Small Business. He has said he will sell the Diamond Bar-based company, Jaykim Engineering Inc., to avoid the possibility of a conflict of interest in his committee work.

In Wednesday’s office lottery, Royce drew Number 55 from a mahogany box in front of the Caucus Room, placing him smack in the middle of the freshmen lining up to select quarters. A few hours later, when the clerk called out his number, Royce surveyed the list of remaining offices and chose Room 1404, a suite on the fourth floor of the Longworth Building, the second oldest of the three House office structures.

While it doesn’t have a view of the Capitol, the office is near an elevator and the tunnel to the newer and more choice Rayburn Building, where Royce’s committees will meet.

Kim, who was in California on Wednesday, delegated the lottery chore to his staff. And perhaps it was a mistake. He wound up with number 83, which secured him Room 502 on the fifth floor--also known as the Attic--of the venerable Cannon Building, which opened in 1908.

But staff assistant Valerie Brooks put the best possible spin on the selection. “We’re kind of excited about it,” she said. “We’ve got quite a bit of privacy up there.”