Rules Fetch entity by property using fixed User Role
Answering my own quesiton. I guess I should have found this sooner. But writing it down here helped me process the vocabulary I needed to search for.

I do indeed need to switch to direct input mode. In fact if you switch to direct input mode it will give you a list of roles to select. However direct input mode is not available on initial creation.

To fix simply save as some value (I used site:user:role). Then edit the rule again and direct input will be available. It appears to be a bug listed here: https://www.drupal.org/node/2168961

Thanks and hope this helps someone else.