We still have no clue why the origional version refuses to work. But via the ChatterBox, we found another, simpler solution that does work:

$name = "kylere'";

my $sql = "SELECT Name FROM $table WHERE Name like ? order by Name";
# ... or order by whatever, it doesn't matter
my $ids = $dbh->selectcol_arrayref($sql, undef, "$name%");
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