After fiddling around with the nodes, the answer to my original questions seems to be Yes.
The key is the location of the center point of the reference object - here the rectangle. (Thx, @NP5 for the post)
Center at z = 0
Moving the center point in the rectangle down impacts the other objects.
Moving the center point up
Nodes - Object is the reference geometry. Use Object as vector node.
Hope this helps.
Ray