I was able to resolve the issue. Turns out I was using an older version of JS composer. Updating to the newest version broke my site so I tracked down the error and updated the html2element function to
html2element: function(html) {
var $template, attributes = {},
template = html;
$template = $(template(this.model.toJSON()).trim()), _.each($template.get(0).attributes, function(attr) {
attributes[attr.name] = attr.value
}), this.$el.attr(attributes).html($template.html()), this.setContent(), this.renderContent()
},
in /wp-content/plugins/js_composer/assets/js/backend/composer-view.js