Congratulations on your new card! It's the Chase rep that doesn't understand. Basically, it's like this:

The card will earn you points which will then be automatically converted to Airtran A+ rewards. When they say 32000 points - to us - that means 32 A+ rewards. I have also noticed that the Chase reps don't really understand the "2 business class upgrades upon first purchase." Naturally this is simply 8 A+ rewards (but they will understand it as 8000 "points").

No, they aren't talking about WN Rapid Reward points, but you could convert them over to RR points if you wanted to by using the tool in the WN website.

I have no idea about companion pass. If you can get that with some set amount of RR points then, yes.