Workbench Moderation: Published data overriding draft data on draft view
It was a two-part solution.
There was a bug that needed patch #16 from here:
https://www.drupal.org/project/workbench_moderation/issues/2021903

I also needed to add vid to node_load:
    When I combined the 
    $vids = $node->vid;
    $node = node_load( $nid, $vids ); 
    with patch #16 from: 
    https://www.drupal.org/project/workbench_moderation/issues/2021903 it solves the issue.