Failed Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke, who has been criticized in the past for joking about being an absentee dad who "sometimes" helps his wife raise their three children, said Thursday that he only recently learned his 12-year-old son's email address.

"We emailed each other," O'Rourke told podcast host Bill Simmons during a conversation about the Democrat's eldest son, Ulysses. "It was the first kind of independent contact I'd had with him, where it wasn't his mom saying, ‘Hey, write your dad a letter, he'd love that.' I found his email address—I didn't know that kids emailed—found his email address and just shot him a note yesterday."

O'Rourke said he told his son: "Hey Ulysses, thinking about you. Don't break anyone's ankles on the blacktop today." "Okay, dad. Thanks," Ulysses emailed in response.

Just days after launching his ill-fated campaign with a widely mocked Vanity Fair cover story, O'Rourke was forced to apologize for his "ham-handed" remarks about how his wife, Amy, the daughter of a billionaire real estate investor, was raising the couple's children, "sometimes with my help."

O'Rourke also vowed to be "more thoughtful going forward" about "the way in which I acknowledge the truth of the criticism that I have enjoyed white privilege." The much-hyped candidate has failed to gain traction in the Democratic primary, despite cursing on network television and promising to take away guns. He is currently polling at 3 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average.