May was appointed to the role in June 2022 in the wake of the Liberal Party’s state and federal election defeats, replacing Sascha Meldrum who had been state director since 2015.

A former staffer to Liberal Premier Steven Marshall, May has historical links to the party’s moderate faction.

Her resignation comes in the same month that former Liberal Party leader David Speirs resigned and was replaced by frontbencher Vincent Tarzia.

It also comes after the Liberal Party’s state council annual general meeting last weekend, in which the Right faction consolidated its power and successfully elected Leah Blyth as state president.

Announcing she was stepping down in an email to Liberal Party members on Thursday, May said: “I believe we are now in a good place to continue building.”

“The time is therefore appropriate in the electoral cycle for me to move on, knowing that we are well prepared for the upcoming federal election, whilst giving my successor ample time to implement our federal campaign in SA and prepare to execute a winning strategy for the 2026 state election due in 18 months time,” she said.

“I look forward to supporting whoever is selected as the new Director to transition into the role over the coming weeks and continue to support them achieve success for the Liberal Party at the next federal and state elections.

“I look forward to remaining an active member of the SA Liberal Party and supporting our cause into the future.”

The resignation comes with the Liberal Party in the full swing of federal preselections. The party elected its candidate for Mayo two weeks ago and is set to make a call regional seat of Grey next month.

State seat preselections are also set to heat up following this month’s release of the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission report outlining a draft electoral map for 2026 state election. Speirs, the former Opposition leader, last week urged the party to begin preselections in state seats immediately.

In her resignation email, May highlighted a list of achievements during her time as state director, including a new annual convention, establishing a “Presidents’ Forum” and returning State Council meetings to the regions.

“Last year we delivered constitutional reform, introduced better governance arrangements for Conventions, launched a new Liberal Party brand and ran a series of campaigns highlighting Labor’s monumental failure to fix the ambulance ramping crisis,” she wrote.

Since his elevation to Opposition leader, Tarzia has been attacked almost daily by an anonymous email address – named Tales of Tarzia – which distributes information to South Australia’s political journalists and is widely believed to come from within the Liberal Party.