After more research:
I was confused before because I missed this: To use Static IP Pool you *MUST* enable Guest Customization.
While Ubuntu 12.04 is not listed as supported as near as I can tell it works fine. It set the hostname, static ip config, root password, and runs the customization script.
The one error I've seen in /var/log/vmware-imc/customization.log is this
Dec 29 23:47:39 customize-guest: /var/tmp/dhclient.conf.old not found
Which I think is caused because /etc/dhcp3 has been renamed to /etc/dhcp. A fix is to create a symlink
ln -s /etc/dhcp /etc/dhcp3
Once this was in place I didn't see that error any more, and the /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf file was updated.