With her candidates losing all four byelections on Monday night, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith addressed the media in Calgary, saying some soul-searching will need to be done to realize the way forward.

The Wildrose candidates finished second in two of the byelections and third in the others, with the closest race being in Calgary-West with Sheila Taylor being defeated by Mike Ellis by just over 300 votes.

On Tuesday morning, Smith said that that wasn’t the result that they’d hoped for, or even some pundits had predicted, but knows that the Wildrose is still a strong contender.

“The Wildrose is the only party capable of contesting government in every single seat across the province. Whether it’s in Edmonton, whether it’s in Calgary, whether it’s rural; what got demonstrated yesterday is that none of the other parties have the ability to launch a campaign that we do.”

Smith said that there has been a lot of speculation about her continuing as leader of the party and has put the suggestion forward to her party that they conduct a leadership review.

“I have the fire in my belly to do it. I want to do it, but the way these things work is that our members get to decide these things,” she said.

Smith says she did receive a 90 percent review last time and says that she does not need to face another until after the next election but thinks it’s important for her to know she has the support of members.

Therefore, she has asked her administration to put a vote on the agenda of the party’s next annual general meeting on if another leadership review is warranted.

“Not only that, but we are going to do a full review of the campaign. Even though we ran a great campaign, there are always things we can improve.”

Smith says that it’s already very clear from what she’s heard from her members that the party that it doesn’t have the right balance between criticizing the government and showing what they can do to improve.

She says that with the byelection result alone, it’s clear that something needs to be done.

“It was disappointing that we came just short in West and disappointing that we came in third place in Elbow. There is obviously something we need to figure out about our messaging, the way we present ourselves, and the way we campaign to give confidence to urban voters in Calgary and Edmonton that we’ll be able to represent their interests.”

Nevertheless, she is hopeful that members will give her the mandate to go forward to lead.

“I think that we have great things to accomplish together but, that being said, you can only lead if people are willing to follow. With all the speculation out there, I will leave it to our members to give me that mandate.

“I want my members to know and caucus to know that I respect their decision on this. If they want to do a leadership review and decide whether I’m the right person to move the party forward, I welcome that.”

The Wildrose annual general meeting will take place in Red Deer on November 13 and 14.