HARRISBURG — Scott Wagner, who once warned that he would carry a baseball bat into Pennsylvania’s Senate to get things done, bid farewell Monday to the institution that he had barged into as a write-in candidate four years earlier to concentrate on his Republican campaign for governor.

Wagner, who will challenge Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s re-election bid in November, told the chamber’s members in a 15-minute farewell speech that he had gone to the Senate to change the culture.

Now, he said, he can do more as governor.

The waste-hauling millionaire also seemed to acknowledge that he had been a lightning rod in the Senate, apologizing if he had ever offended anyone, and vowing to work with senators to fix the state’s problems if elected. Wagner said he had created an environment for better dialogue.

“Listen, there’s one thing in life and business. You can fight like cats and dogs. Let’s go have lunch. I mean really, that’s what we do in business,” Wagner told reporters afterward. “If the people in Pennsylvania ever see everybody in the Senate holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’ I’d head out of town as fast as possible.”

Wagner even vowed to work with one of his most strident critics, Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia, who once loudly and repeatedly called Wagner a “boil on the butt of progress” during a rally yards from Wagner’s office.

Wagner also seemed determined to change perceptions of himself.

As part of his apology, he said he had come to Harrisburg “with a strong personality and a strong will to get things accomplished.”

Wagner, who once said that “we’d never miss them” if 10 percent of the state’s teachers were laid off and said in the primary that the state spends “enough money” on schools, repeatedly stressed the importance of fixing public schools.

“People have branded me as a person who wants to cut funding,” Wagner said. “That could not be further from the truth. I want to make sure more money is getting to the classroom.”