Well, I found partial success by switching the reference field to sys_user instead of customer_contact in the reference qualifier settings of the variable field.  The field in the portal now shows a value.  The problem now is it only shows one value. I've set it up now to test multiple contacts, so it should give me a list but it doesn't. It just gives me the logged in user again. I still think my code is right. It shouldn't really be this hard to do something so simple.