Today Bill Richardson sent out an email touting a Zogby poll suggesting that Richardson is the most likely Democratic candidate to beat a Republican in the general election. It was formatted very simply, with no distracting html banners or buttons, like the emails being sent out by the Obama and Dodd campaigns.

Looks like Richardson just fired the next shot in the plain-text email wars of 2007.

But this email was different. In addition to the stripped-down formatting, it included what is apparently an actual email thread below the initial message.

In the thread, Deputy Campaign Manager Amanda Cooper forwards Dave Contarino, presumably another Richardson staffer, recent Zogby poll results showing that 50% of respondents wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

While this kind of thing has been done before, it seems to be a first in a presidential campaign.

We’ve seen plain text emails written to look like they were shot off on a BlackBerry, then an email from an unknown Obama supporter, and now this. What next, spelling mistakes and accidentally forwarding an angry email about your co-worker to an entire list?

However, the informality works. These plain-text emails have met a positive response and, in Obama’s case, helped generate a huge number of donations. We’ll see what happens with Richardson.