Thanks John!
Note that I had to double up on the backslashes before newpage as in:
insertPgBrks (Para [RawInline (Format "tex") "\\newpage"]) = pgBrkBlock 

For a complete summary, here is the system set up, filter and steps I am 
using to manage page breaks.
System:
RHEL 6.6
ghc 7.8.3
Pandoc 1.13.2.1
R 3.1.3
RStudio 0.98.1028

Filter code:
import Text.Pandoc.JSON

pgBrkXml :: String
pgBrkXml = "<w:p><w:r><w:br w:type=\"page\"/></w:r></w:p>"

pgBrkBlock :: Block
pgBrkBlock = RawBlock (Format "openxml") pgBrkXml

insertPgBrks :: Block -> Block
insertPgBrks (Para [RawInline (Format "tex") "\\newpage"]) = pgBrkBlock 
--insertPgBrks (RawBlock (Format "tex") "\newpage") = pgBrkBlock
insertPgBrks blk = blk 

main = toJSONFilter insertPgBrks

compile the filter
$ghc --make -v pandoc-word-newpage.hs

.Rmd file
---
title: "Test Doc"
author: "Joel Allen"
date: "04/16/2015"
output:
  word_document:
    pandoc_args:
    - --filter
    - pandoc-word-newpage
---
\newpage

Test Page 1

\newpage

Test Page 2

I then knit to word, pdf, or html in Rstudio.  Word and pdf now put 
pagebreaks in the same place.

Thanks to all for the advice!

Joel

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