Link padding HTML email

Question

I have table with this markup:

<tr id="main_nav">
    <td style="width: 100%" colspan="2">
        <a>Link1</a>
        <a>Link2</a>
        <a>Link3</a>                            
    </td>
</tr>

I need to set padding to these links, but I can't make it to work... CSS:

#main_nav a {
    color: #fff;
    font-weight: bold;  
    padding-left: 1em;
}

What I've tried: wrap link into p tag, span tag, add css display block, display table, add style with padding to link. Can not wrap each link in <td> tag!

Edit: Tried margin instead of padding, no luck.

Answer 1

I successfully get around this issue by setting a large border to the same colour as the background.

border: 10px solid #fff;

Answer 2

Put <a>Link1</a> within a div, then set the div padding.

If it still doesn't work, try to change the width of the divs, like here: http://jsfiddle.net/XWLv6/1/