RED DEER — Danielle Smith put her political future on the line Friday during a speech to party faithful, promising to step down as Wildrose leader if the party doesn’t form government in 2016.

In her keynote speech to about 500 Wildrose members at the party’s annual general meeting in Red Deer, Smith admitted the party has faced a “challenging” couple of weeks since losing four byelections last month.

“If we win the election in 2016, I will be premier and we will be the ones facing a new leader of the Official Opposition,” Smith said. “If we don’t win the election in 2016, it will be up to you as Wildrose members to choose a new leader.”

With the party at a crossroads, Smith told its members they have a choice between two paths to the next provincial election.

One path would entrench the Wildrose as an opposition party — “the NDP of the right in the legislature.”

The second would take the party into government territory, but she said it must distinguish itself from the Progressive Conservatives, who enjoyed a bump in the polls after Jim Prentice took over as leader and premier in September.

The governing Tories swept the byelection races, sending Prentice, Health Minister Stephen Mandel, Education Minister Gordon Dirks and rookie MLA Mike Ellis to the legislature. The Wildrose placed third in two races — Edmonton-Whitemud and Calgary-Elbow — and second in Calgary-Foothills and Calgary-West, where the party lost by a few hundred votes.

The party is down to 16 seats in the legislature after outspoken MLA Joe Anglin quit caucus to sit as an Independent.

After the byelection losses, Smith asked for a leadership review from members, but backtracked after her caucus gave her its unanimous support.

Political observers have said the party failed to make headway in the races because it campaigned against the legacy of former premier Alison Redford, rather than presenting an alternative to voters.

“Here is the hard truth: something we are doing isn’t quite working,” Smith told the audience, laying out a dozen ways her party differs from the Tories — among them a commitment to balancing the budget, keeping taxes low, creating a new relationship with cities, increasing the Heritage Savings Trust Fund to $150 billion and decentralizing health care.

She lamented a perceived media bias, saying byelection policy announcements weren’t widely reported.

“Let’s now put aside any notion that the media are going to carry our message to the public over the next 500 days. They aren’t,” she said.

Instead, she challenged the grassroots to help polish the party’s image with a plan to enlist 1,000 “Wildrose ambassadors” to bypass the media by speaking to one million voters — two per day for each volunteer — by 2016. She pushed for 100 supporters to take her lead and start a personal blog about the party’s positions.

“Write your blog. Write letters to the editor. Call in to the local radio talk show. Talk about why you support Wildrose.”

She asked members to submit ideas for 100 changes to implement in 100 days if the Wildrose forms a government, such as outlawing photo radar — one of many policy proposals set to be debated by convention delegates over the weekend.