Thank you to everyone for the replies. I got ahold of a local generator technician who offered a few suggestions. What I ended up doing was removing the altitude adjustment knob, which then allowed access to unscrew that jet and pull it out. From there I was able to clean it along with the fuel flow inside the carb with carb cleaner. Let it soak a few minutes, put back together and fired right up.
Was a pleasant feeling being the final puzzle to our working rig. While I knew it was an issue when purchasing...still didn't sit right with me until it was working.