Fresh from a bruising, final governor’s race debate, Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Alex Sink hit the road Tuesday in a homestretch drive to push their voters to the polls while sharpening their attacks on each other.

Scott launched a bus tour expected to carry him through Election Day, leaving the University of South Florida site of Monday night’s CNN debate for appearances along the Nature Coast before heading to The Villages for an evening rally.

Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, attended Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting in Tallahassee, where she was forced to explain the firing of a campaign aide who had slipped her a cell phone carrying a two-sentence tactical advice message during Monday’s debate, before heading out for a campaign appearance in Jacksonville.

Accused of cheating by Scott, Sink tried to portray the debate texting gaffe as a positive, saying she stood up to do what was right after realizing the rules violation. “When I heard what had happened and got to the bottom of it, I took accountability,” Sink said.

Scott, though, kept Sink’s rule-breaking alive during a breakfast stop at a New Port Richey restaurant.

“She knew the rules,” Scott said. “She didn’t have to read the e-mail, she did. That’s what she does. She never takes responsibility for what she does. It’s just like she won’t tell us what taxes she’s going to raise.”

Scott alerted CNN officials to Sink’s reading the message during a break in Monday night’s debate on a Droid cell phone delivered by a makeup artist. The message was designed to bolster her defense against Scott, who had begun challenging Sink for being a board member of Sykes Enterprises, a Tampa call center sued by Florida’s pension fund and thousands of other investors accusing it of inflating its financial health.

The message read: “The attorney who (w)on the Sykes suit said alex sink did nothing wrong. Tell not to let him keep talking about her.”

Sink swiftly fired aide Brian May, who the campaign confirmed had written the message and also signed the CNN rules agreement on behalf of Sink which barred such communication or notes during the debate.

Sink, who has tried through the campaign to portray Scott as incapable of playing by the rules in the way he’s run his businesses, said she was the one who made sure her campaign was accountable for the mistake.

“I said ‘Find out where that text message came from,’ and actually it came from somebody on my campaign staff -- clearly against the rules -- and that person’s had to leave my campaign,” Sink said Tuesday.

Asked if he would’ve fired May, Scott said Tuesday, “I wouldn’t have read the e-mail.”

It was not the beginning of the final week of a campaign that Sink wanted – starting with all the questions from reporters about cheating in a debate. After Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Sink, in a hurry to get to an event in Jacksonville, took only a few questions from reporters and they were all about Monday’s debate.

Sink was headed to Northeast Florida for a roundtable with business leaders – a group that often backs Republicans but one which the Democrat is hoping to peel away, at least in part. Sink is a banker, and while Scott is a longtime businessman who has focused on making it easier for businesses to expand here, Sink has tried to send corporate Florida the message that Scott was only successful in business because his companies took ethical and legal shortcuts. That message got through to a typically strongly pro-business editorial board.

Sink this week has touted her endorsement by the Florida Times-Union, the newspaper in Jacksonville, which noted in its endorsment that it usually “isn’t known for suggesting Democratic Party candidates for governor in November elections.” The usually conservative editorial page in a generally conservative part of the state said that Scott’s business background raises “more concern than confidence,” and that the “business perspective Scott says he will bring to the governor’s office is tarnished.”