…bummed out that nobody could help. I was able to trouble shoot the problem myself and figured I would post here in case anyone else runs into this…
The problem was not with my $_POST variables, it was with PHP Exec plugin. I was unaware of the “globals issue” with the plugin and this was causing some unexpected behavior. Linky: https://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50/#globals
I did stumble across another tip and that was to leave the form action blank (“”) in order for it to post to itself.